I'm currently building a Chrome Extension with a vuejs powered frontend. This worked pretty great using vuecli. Up until the point at which the app started using the Webextension-API. Normal websites do not have access to this API; registered Extensions do.
So what's a good setup for developing a vuejs-Extension with the power of using vuecli (which supports webpack tooling)? What setup allows to test the application?
I recommend using vue-cli-plugin-browser-extension. Note that while the README indicates Vue CLI 3.x support, it also works with Vue CLI 4.x (tested with 4.3.1).
It supports several features that will save you a bunch of time, including live-reload, and bundling for Chrome and Firefox (and other browsers).
To install it in a Vue CLI project, just run: vue add browser-extension.
After some contemplating, I came across the vue-cli-service-binary. This binary allows to watch a project and rebuild the app as required. By default, vuecli will output files to dist, which is the directory in which I placed manifest.json, contentScript.js and backgroundScript.js files. The following command will then rebuild the app as needed, allowing for almost hot-reloading (opening and closing the popup). Build times are reasonably quick for a small app (~200ms).
vue-cli-service build --watch --no-clean
Lastly, you might have to disable eslint on save (see this), as it throws errors about chrome not being found. Then I load the unpacked extension into a clean Chrome session and start testing it using the developer tools. Unfortunately, I have not yet gotten Vue Devtools working with the extension.
It works for me: I can develop vuejs-powered Chrome extensions in a reasonabale way. I am still wondering if anybody has any better workflows or ideas for improvement?
EDIT: @tony19's answer is the preferred way.