This extension replaces the following bookmarklets:
- Dev Mode On
- Compile
- Dev Mode Off
It works in Firefox and Chrome and it is Manifest V3 based.
The extension scans for all GWT modules in all frames (main window and iframes). In firefox you need to click in the scanAll button to request an extra permission in order to work for iframes with different origins.
The extension provides some rudimetary support to save the configuration so it can be reused for the specific module/protocol combination. This is useful when you have multiple GWT modules or HTTPS setups as described here https://vasvir.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/gwt-super-dev-mode-https-setup-in-7-steps/
The extension is for GWT users, which are developers, and which should know what they are doing. Obviously if you use extensions like this that injects scripts left and right you may open your self some new security holes. If you have any doubts please review the source code (~ 250 LOC) and decide for your self.
There are no plans yet to release this extension officially. Since it addresses developers and not the general public this is not required. A developer can easily clone it from GitHub and install it directly from the cloned directory. There are many resources in the web on how to do this for both Firefox and Chrome.
The extensions is somewhat complex due to the restrictions imposed by browser makers. It is not allowed for the content script to access the page's variables. So the content script has to inject a script to access these variables. The extension communicates with the content script with messages. The content script communicates with the page with messages. All communication are async of course. So there is this weird trampoline:
extension (popup) --- content script --- page (injected script)
The final act of the page injected script is to inject dev_mode.js which handles the actual compilation exactly as it was with the bookmarklets.
With the advent of Content Security Policies (CSP) and the automatic blocking of third party cookies some pages refuse to compile the GWT modules in them. I haven't encounter a CSP problem yet but I have been bitten by the 3rd party cookie protection when dev_mode.js was trying to access sessionStorage. To spice things up, this is not happening in all pages of course.
So to sum it up, injecting dev_mode.js won't fly for long. What needs to be done to workaround that is port the dev_mode.js to this extension. The extension has all the access it requires even if it has to go the trampoline hoops described above.
The problem is that dev_mode.js is served by the GWT codeserver and that means it is changed in lockstep with the codeserver as it is the only client of it. It won't be fun to incorporate the current dev_mode.js just to have a new incompatible one released the next day.
So for now if you encounter problems with the compilation try to
- disable 3rd party cookie protection
- use some other extension to modify CSP