Should we disable minification? about webextension-toolbox

[bboydflo]

I think this needs to be added asap. Please read the official blog: https://blog.chromium.org/2018/10/trustworthy-chrome-extensions-by-default.html where it among others says that minified source code is allowed but it is not allowed to obfuscate code.

UPDATE
Specifically google blog states:

Thus, minification will still be allowed, including the following techniques:

• Removal of whitespace, newlines, code comments, and block delimiters
• Shortening of variable and function names
• Collapsing the number of JavaScript files

I am a bit in doubt now after reading this: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/MinifyResources

[bboydflo]

👍 for B or D in this order.

[balcsida]

Started working on this

[balcsida]

IMHO I would go with the first option. I completely understand the reasons why a developer would like to achieve as small file sizes, but for my extensions, it majority of their sizes was caused by the included, unoptimized assets (e.g. icons)

[bboydflo]

if that's implemented would it be possible to enable minification again?

[HaNdTriX]

@bboydflo in solution B & D yes.

So far I know dead code elimination will be disabled as well. This might suck a projects like react, that depend heavily on dead code elimination.

[balcsida]

I've checked and it seems that AMO allows you to upload the un-minified version of your code separately for the manual review.
What if we generate two seperate package on webextension-toolbox build firefox, one with minified and dead code elimination, and one without it?

[JimMorrison723]

I'd say go with option D.
No need to complicate things (and build a not minified version with cli flag is fine)

[balcsida]

Hi @bboydflo,

Thanks for bringing my attention to this and apologies for not reacting earlier on your comment.
Nowadays, I have lots of things on my plate (higher load during work, plenty of extra projects, ~3-4 hours of sleep), so I cannot guarantee anything regarding this yet.
Anyway, I added the major priority flag to indicate the importance of this.

[balcsida]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your kind patience.

I made some progress on this case today, now we have a command line argument --no-minimize/-m for the build command, which disables Webpack minimize.
I manually tested it and it works as expected. Just need to add some test cases and we are good to go.

I've also discovered a bug while working on this issue.