Research extension to Manifest V3

[hieudd]

Overview

There are many challenges when switching to MV3, this issue is created to listing them and their solutions

Challenges

WASM

• Use WASM on extension MV3
  • Details: Extension with MV3 is not support run WASM => Some lib like @polkadot/api can not work with full feature
  • Solution: Chrome from version 102 support wasm by add CSP in file manifest.json

    "content_security_policy": {
      "extension_pages": "script-src 'self' 'wasm-unsafe-eval'; object-src 'self'"
    }

Service worker

• Events

  • Details: Like above isssue, service worker run only when it listen event it will not available all time. This mean extension can not run all time like current background page of MV2, tt run only when use have any interaction. We need to change architect to suitable with them but the good new it will help us optimize extension performance when computer idle. We need to know when which event can make service worker wake up?
  • Solution: Use fetch request to wake up service worker before use it. We can create some special fetch request to service worker and this response utils service worker is ready

• Message passing problem

  • Details: Service worker or MV3 extension with event and it can be stop after 5 minues. Message passing can be fail like what happened on this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1152255
  • Solution: Researching...

• Life cycle of service worker of an extension

  • Details: We need to to know about service worker in extension clearly. Listing the different with web worker in this article https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Workers_API/Using_web_workers. Can we use more than one servicew worker in the extension?

• Synchronize state:

  • Details: Service worker not run full time but we need to can have more than one service woker? If have more than one service workers how to sync their state between each other?
  • Solution: Need more test but this can be a solution StorageManager.persist()

• Backup and restore websocket connection

  • Detail: When service worker terminated all WS connection on it will be disconnected, some time we need very long time to connect them again. Have any way to backup and restore to next sevice worker?
  • Solution: Researching...

Idea to resolve above problems

• Is this idea can be implement and work well on MV3? Have any idea better? Need to research about life cycle of service worker.
  

Database

• Use IndexedDB instead of Chrome.local.storage
  • Details: The features of chrome.local.storage are very limited and difficult to extend.
  • Solution: Change to use IndexedDB and Dexie frameworks.