63 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
63 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
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# DevTools Extension
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To make debugging easier, Electron has basic support for the
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[Chrome DevTools Extension][devtools-extension].
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For most DevTools extensions you can simply download the source code and use
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the `BrowserWindow.addDevToolsExtension` API to load them. The loaded extensions
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will be remembered so you don't need to call the API every time when creating
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a window.
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** NOTE: React DevTools does not work, follow the issue here https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/915 **
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For example, to use the [React DevTools Extension](https://github.com/facebook/react-devtools)
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, first you need to download its source code:
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```bash
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$ cd /some-directory
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$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/facebook/react-devtools.git
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```
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Follow the instructions in [`react-devtools/shells/chrome/Readme.md`](https://github.com/facebook/react-devtools/blob/master/shells/chrome/Readme.md) to build the extension.
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Then you can load the extension in Electron by opening DevTools in any window,
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and running the following code in the DevTools console:
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```javascript
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const BrowserWindow = require('electron').remote.BrowserWindow;
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BrowserWindow.addDevToolsExtension('/some-directory/react-devtools/shells/chrome');
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```
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To unload the extension, you can call the `BrowserWindow.removeDevToolsExtension`
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API with its name and it will not load the next time you open the DevTools:
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```javascript
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BrowserWindow.removeDevToolsExtension('React Developer Tools');
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```
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## Format of DevTools Extension
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Ideally all DevTools extensions written for the Chrome browser can be loaded by
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Electron, but they have to be in a plain directory. For those packaged with
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`crx` extensions, there is no way for Electron to load them unless you find a
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way to extract them into a directory.
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## Background Pages
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Currently Electron doesn't support the background pages feature in Chrome
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extensions, so some DevTools extensions that rely on this feature may
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not work in Electron.
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## `chrome.*` APIs
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Some Chrome extensions may use `chrome.*` APIs for features and while there has
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been some effort to implement those APIs in Electron, not all have been
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implemented.
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Given that not all `chrome.*` APIs are implemented if the DevTools extension is
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using APIs other than `chrome.devtools.*`, the extension is very likely not to
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work. You can report failing extensions in the issue tracker so that we can add
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support for those APIs.
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[devtools-extension]: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/devtools
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