Disable Chrome Extension Minification

Question

I've been working on a Chrome extension and I have a minor annoyance with debugging my scripts. My background page is a Javascript file and it is always minified automatically by Chrome. You can see how this becomes a pain to use the developer tools on because everything is on a single line. Anyone know if this can be disabled?

Answer 1

To view your Chrome extension source normally:

1 open Chrome's extension management page
2 make sure developer mode is checked

3 click link after inspect views to open extension files in chrome developer tools window

4 click link to included script file in background page to view background script

Answer 2

Perhaps this is relevant.

http://www.elijahmanor.com/7-chrome-tips-developers-designers-may-not-know/

2. The ability to Pretty Print ( aka unminify ) JavaScript source

Sometimes I'm trying to figure out a bug and unfortunately the JavaScript that was included has been minified. As you are aware trying to debug a minified file is nearly impossible. How do you set a break point on a line that is a bazillion characters long?

Thankfully Chrome has a Pretty Print feature that will take a minified JavaScript file and format it property. All you need to do is to click the "{ }" icon on the bottom toolbar to activate this feature. Of course the names will still be obfuscated ( depending on what program minfied the JavaScript in the first place ), but you will at least be able to set break points and debug the code.