October was eight releases, 4.1.31 to 4.1.38, and most of them close a gap between what the terminal says and what the browser is doing.
Creator and Lead Developer, Extension.js
One sidebar key for every browser
4.1.31 translates sidebar and toolbar keys to the name each browser reads. Declare the Chromeside_panel and Firefox gets a working sidebar. Declare the Firefox sidebar_action and Chrome and Edge get the side panel. The Firefox Manifest V2 recipe gets its toolbar button back, and the build says what it translated in one line. How each browser opens the panel covers the runtime side.The sidebar starters changed too. Since 4.1.33, every extension create sidebar template asks the open tab for its title through a ready-made message channel, so a panel that follows the page starts from working code.Build beside a running dev session
extension build used to write into dist/<browser>, the same folder a running extension dev serves, and the browser you were working in lost its files. 4.1.35 adds --out-dir. extension build --out-dir <path> writes <path>/<browser> and leaves dist/<browser> to the dev server. 4.1.36 closes the other side: a build into the folder a live dev session owns stops before writing anything and points at the flag.Zip archives moved in 4.1.31. extension build --zip writes dist/<name>-<version>-<browser>.zip beside the browser folder instead of inside it, so two browsers built with the same name never write over each other, and 4.1.37 transliterates accented letters in that name. If your CI reads the zip path, check it.Development-only files
4.1.37 adds development-only entries. Aplayer.dev.html in pages/ or a bench.dev.ts in scripts/ runs in extension dev and never reaches a production build. No HTML, no chunk, no manifest entry.The same release adds include to extension.config.js. Map output paths to files or folders, model weights or an exported tree outside the project included, layered per browser and per command.Ready means running
A dev session used to print ready once the dev server was up. Since 4.1.36, Chrome dev sessions print ready only once the extension connects, and name the stuck profile when it never does. 4.1.31 started that work: a changed.env restarts the session with the new value, an edited extension.config.js asks for a restart instead of printing success, and a browser that never started marks ready.json as an error so --wait exits non-zero.Safari stays in the background
Since 4.1.33, the Safari app a dev run opens stays in the background and is the only one quit on stop, so your own Safari is left alone. 4.1.34 reuses an unchanged Safari build and says when Safari resets storage, and 4.1.36 reads the signature off the built app and names a team Xcode lacks. The Safari guide has the whole loop.Store warnings before you upload
Three things a store reviewer would have told you. Since 4.1.36 a production build flagslocalhost and other loopback origins left in the manifest, and an Edge build says when its embedded settings page will be clipped to 368px, with the one-line edge:options_ui fix. 4.1.35 gives a Chromium options_ui page that paints empty until its data arrives a first layout, so Chrome’s embedded dialog opens instead of staying shut. And a web_accessible_resources scope you already list for a few sites stays on those sites even when a scripts/ file references it.4.1.37 also cleans up after MAIN world content scripts. Production builds stop publishing the extension’s base URL and the cleanup global to the host page, and the dev browser passes bot checks and keeps sign-in pop-ups responsive.A budget for WebAssembly
An on-device ML build with onnxruntime or ffmpeg used to end with a budget warning it could never act on. 4.1.37 gives WebAssembly runtimes a 32 MiB budget of their own, and 4.1.38 reads the surface that fetches the file. A.wasm reached only by pages and workers gets the 32 MiB, one a content script or the service worker reaches keeps 1 MiB and still warns, and perfBudgets.ignore excuses any asset by its output path or a glob.Also
The dev server answers only the hosts it knows since 4.1.31, and--allowed-hosts web,.ngrok.app adds a Docker service or a tunnel. The docs gained a comparison with Plasmo and one with CRXJS, and the Discord invite no longer expires.November is already at 4.1.39. Safari builds take your own app icon, a production build warns when a public env variable is named like a secret, a SQLite DevTools template, Firefox content scripts that run once after a reload, and an Edge store zip that leaves the manifest key out while dist/edge keeps it. More on that next time.Cezar AugustoCreator and Lead Developer, Extension.js