CRX Maven Plugin

The CRX Maven Plugin is a Maven plugin that collects all the resources of a Google Chrome Extensions and packages them into a signed CRX archive.

There are two ways to use the CRX Maven Plugin:

Use the crx packaging type when the primary artifact produced by the project is the CRX archive
The crx:crx goal when the CRX archive is not the primary artifact produced by the build.

Signature

The CRX archive must be signed using the RSA algorithm with the SHA-1 hash function. The public/private key used to sign the CRX archive must be supplied as a .pem file. And it is recommended that the .pem file be secured with a password.

The location of the .pem file and password can be specified in the following ways:

Globally properties in settings.xml (recommended)

Defining crxPEMFile and crxPEMPassword as global properties in the user’s settings.xml is recommended approach for specifying the location of the .pem file and the password that was used to secure it.

<settings>
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>crx</id>
      <activation>
        <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
      </activation>
      <properties>
        <crxPEMFile>${user.home}/crx.pem</crxPEMFile>
        <crxPEMPassword>SparkleAndFade</crxPEMPassword>
      </properties>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
</settings>

Furthermore, it is possible to avoid storing the password in plain text in the settings.xml file. See the Password Encryption guide on the Maven site.

Project properties pom.xml (not recommended)

It is possible to define crxPEMFile and crxPEMPassword as properties of the CRX Maven Plugin. But this approach is not recommended because it means specifying the password in plain text in the pom.xml and hard-coding the dependency on the .pem file.

<project>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>com.btmatthews.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>crx-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.0.0</version>
        <configuration>
          <crxPEMFile>${user.home}/crx.pem</crxPEMFile>
          <crxPEMPassword>SparkleAndFade</crxPEMPassword>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

Command line properties

Another approach is to define the crxPEMFile and crxPEMPassword properties on the Maven command line. This approach can be used to override properties defined in settings.xml.

$ mvn -DcrxPEMFile=<path> [-DcrxPEMPassword=<password>] <goals>

where:
<path> is the location of the .pem file, e.g. ~/crx.pem
<password> is the password used to secure the .pem file, e.g. SparkleAndFade
<goals> are the Maven goals being executed, e.g. install

Using the crx packaging type

The table below describes the life-cycle of the CRX Maven Plugin when using the crx packaging type:

Phase	Actions
package	The sources in ./src/main/chrome are assembled in memory into a [ZIP file format](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_(file_format)) that is then signed and output in the [Google Chrome Extension](http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/crx.html) format with the extension .crx. This is the CRX archive.
install	The CRX archive file is deployed to the user’s local [repository](http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-repositories.html).
deploy	The CRX archive file is deployed to the remote release or snapshot [repository](http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-repositories.html).

The Hello World project described in the Getting Started tutorial on the Google Chrome Extensions site is used as the basis for the following example.

The resources for the Google Chrome Extension project should be placed in the src/main/chrome sub-directory as illustrated below:

HelloWorld
+- pom.xml
+- src
|  +- main
|     +- chrome
|        +- manifest.json
|        +- icon.png
|        +- popup.html
|        +- popup.js
+- target
   +- HelloWorld-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.crx

The pom.xml should be as follows:

<project>
    <groupId>com.btmatthews.crx</groupId>
    <artifactId>HelloWorld</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>crx</packaging>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>com.btmatthews.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>crx-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>1.0.0</version>
                <extensions>true</extensions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

The <extensions>true</extensions> element is required in the POM or one of its ancestors in order to activate the crx packaging type.

The following command line will produce the HelloWord-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.crx artifact in the target sub-directory:

$ mvn -DcrxPEMFile=~/crx.pem -DcrxPEMPassword=SparkleAndFade package

Using the crx:crx goal

As with the previous example the resources for the Google Chrome Extension project should be placed in the src/main/chrome sub-directory as illustrated below:

HelloWorld
+- pom.xml
+- src
|  +- main
|     +- chrome
|     |  +- manifest.json
|     |  +- icon.png
|     |  +- popup.html
|     |  +- popup.js
|     +- java
|     |  +- ...
|     +- webapp
|        +- ...
+- target
   +- HelloWorld-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.crx
   +- HelloWorld-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.war

The pom.xml should be similar to the following:

<project>
    <groupId>com.btmatthews.crx</groupId>
    <artifactId>HelloWorld</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>crx</packaging>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>com.btmatthews.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>crx-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>1.0.0</version>
                <extensions>true</extensions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

The following command line will produce the HelloWord-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.crx artifact in the target sub-directory:

$ mvn -DcrxPEMFile=~/crx.pem -DcrxPEMPassword=SparkleAndFade crx:crx

Maven Central Coordinates

The CRX Maven Plugin has been published in Maven Central at the following coordinates:

<plugin>
    <groupId>com.btmatthews.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>crx-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.1</version>
</plugin

License & Source Code

The CRX Maven Plugin is made available under the Apache License and the source code is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/bmatthews68/crx-maven-plugin.

bmatthews68 / crx-maven-plugin