1248455 - Google Chrome has better diagnostics when manifest.json is invalid

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1224591

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

Attachment: json-error.png

I tried an add-on that had an extra trailing comma in the manifest, like this:

  "permissions": [
      "tabs",
  ]

Trying to install in Firefox, I get a dialog saying:

"This add-on could not be installed because it appears to be corrupt"

Trying to install in Chrome, I a dialog showing me exactly where the error was, and letting me retry after fixing it. See the attached screenshot.

Comment 1

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

I think, if we want people to write WebExtensions, showing errors like this will be _very_ important…

Comment 2

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

We actually do show these kinds of errors in the Browser Console, they're just not very easy to find. I think there are at least a couple of bugs about this already.