Just discovered webext-core/proxy-service

[sgcullen]

Hey @aklinker1 - Just discovered your webext-core/proxy-service

Super useful and intuitive.

Do you plan to wrap some of the webext-core services into wxt?

Thanks for your continued amazing work on what I think must surely be the best extension scaffolding there is!

[aklinker1]

There are some limitations and design mistakes in the webext-core messaging libraries that I'd like to rectify. In most extensions, you'll never notice them because they cover 95% of cases really well, but the main problems are:

1. Horrible, horrible, horrible spaghetti code that's impossible to debug and contribute to in the abstractions I wrote for the different ways of sending messages. Good news is everything is tested here, so I could refactor confidently, but I'd rather make something new under the WXT brand. It is, no joke, the code I am least proud of in my open source work lol.
2. Proxy service can only communicate one layer deep. ie: extension page > background or content script > background. One use case I really wish it supported is main world script > isolated world content script > background. The current messaging library (which powers the proxy) isn't built for this.
3. The way you define the implementation and proxy service in general, you end up with both the implementation and proxy in each bundle. So both the background and popup bundles contain both the implementation and proxy. Not optimal for bundle sizes

Follow #643 to track our progress on WXT's messaging library. It's been in the planning phase forever because it's not a priority for me until v1.0 is out. That said, contributors have been interested in starting the work, but no one has pulled the trigger.

Do you plan to wrap some of the webext-core services into wxt?

• @webext-core/fake-browser → Already a part of wxt/testing
• @webext-core/isolated-element → Already powers createShadowRootUi
• @webext-core/match-patterns → Already used internally for any client-side match pattern checks, and re-exported in as the wxt/utils/match-patterns module anyone can use in their projects

Ones I don't plan to port:

• @webext-core/storage: I've already written a better version of this package under the WXT brand, @wxt-dev/storage, and that is included in all WXT projects. This package is perfectly fine, but it's missing some feature's WXT's storage has.
• @webext-core/messaging: See reasons above
• @webext-core/proxy-service: See reasons above

Maybe port/add to WXT as is:

• @webext-core/job-scheduler: A nice wrapper around alarms that adds cron support. Niche enough that I don't think every project needs it, but it's well designed and works great. I think I've only ever released a single version of this package? Very stable and simple. Might just move this one into the WXT repo as is.

---

Why rewrite some of these packages as WXT? It's easier to maintain two separate packages in two separate repos than maintaining multiple versions of a single package. I would have to setup versioned docs, version branches, apply patches to multiple branches, etc. I'd rather make any major changes and release under the more successful WXT brand (where I'll have to setup those things eventually anyways).

[sgcullen]

Thanks for the detailed run down @aklinker1

Completely makes sense - I had a look through the discussions on WXT's messaging library and it looks good. I really appreciate everyone's work and efforts around this.

Do you have a preferred library for proxy-service like functionality for the time being?

[aklinker1]

I still use @webext-core/proxy-service. It's the simplest RPC library out there. But here are some alternatives:

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/trpc-chrome
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/comctx
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/@webext-pegasus/rpc

They all add more features at the cost of complexity. They'll all work, use what you like!

[sgcullen]

Thanks Aaron - eagerly anticipating the WXT version :-)