Alternative packaging tools

[clach04]

Consider additional instructions/tools for building/packaging:

• https://pypi.org/project/crx3/
• https://pypi.org/project/crx-unpack/
• https://pypi.org/project/dir-to-crx/
  • https://github.com/chernyshev-aleksey/dir_fo_crx
• https://pypi.org/project/crxmake/
• https://github.com/Constellation/crxmake - Ruby

From https://grack.com/blog/2009/11/09/packing-chrome-extensions-in-python/

... some code in Python that uses openssl under the hood to do the grunt work. It cuts some corners by requiring you to pre-zip your files, but you’ll get better results from 7zip -9 than Python’s internal zip code anyways. Pass it three arguments: The input ZIP file, the PEM key (generated when you manually pack the extension in Chrome for the first time) and the output file.

#!/usr/bin/python
# Cribbed from http://github.com/Constellation/crxmake/blob/master/lib/crxmake.rb
# and http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/tools/extensions/chromium_extension.py?revision=14872&content-type=text/plain&pathrev=14872

import sys
from array import *
from subprocess import *

arg0,input,key,output = sys.argv

# Sign the zip file with the private key in PEM format
signature = Popen(["openssl", "sha1", "-sign", key, input], stdout=PIPE).stdout.read();

# Convert the PEM key to DER (and extract the public form) for inclusion in the CRX header
derkey = Popen(["openssl", "rsa", "-pubout", "-inform", "PEM", "-outform", "DER", "-in", key], stdout=PIPE).stdout.read();

out=open(output, "wb");
out.write("Cr24")  # Extension file magic number
header = array("l");
header.append(2); # Version 2
header.append(len(derkey));
header.append(len(signature));
header.tofile(out);
out.write(derkey)
out.write(signature)
out.write(open(input).read())

print "Done."