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@burnout426 said in Very long extension moderation process:
Also, Opera can install extensions from chrome.google.com/webstore.
Are you sure of that? The last time I checked (which was years ago), Opera did not support installs from the Chrome Web Store. Vivaldi does. Edge does. Brave does. So now, Opera does? When did that change?
17 days after submitting, an update to my extension was still not published. So I opened its page and, in the General tab, switched on the checkbox I want my extension to be available for auto-publishing. Also, in the Conversation tab, I entered a remark explaining the situation and asking if there was anything else I needed to do to make the new checkbox setting effective. Although I have not received a answer to that question, my extension was published 59 minutes later. Lesson learned: Switch on the checkbox I want my extension to be available for auto-publishing.
I wonder why Opera exposes that checkbox. The accompanying text implies that not all extensions will meet the criteria for auto-publishing. But it does not cost anything to try, other than some CPU time on Opera's server, so I wonder why the system does not just try auto-publishing automatically for all extensions and updates? That must be the way the Chrome and Firefox stores work – my Chrome and Firefox extensions are always approved within minutes.
@tnowak It seems to me that life would be much easier for everyone if Opera would simply close Opera Add-Ons and build support for the Chrome Web Store into Opera. Why not let a 800 billion dollar corporation with 98,000 employees do the moderation work and store maintenance for you - for free? It works for Vivaldi. It works for Brave. Without Opera Add-Ons, Opera staff could spend more time draining those bug queues – or taking longer weekends 
It sure would be infinitely easier and cheaper for both developers and Opera if the Opera team would allow extensions to be loaded from the Chrome Web Store as the Vivaldi and Brave browsers do.
Here is my math:
Cost for developers to submit and Opera to review extensions = X
Cost if we just used the Chrome Web Store = 0
X divided by 0 = ∞
Does anyone see a mistake in my math?
No, @iann0036, as I said at the beginning of my post, I think 32 hours is good. I think I got it good.
Good news - My two extensions got published 32 hours after submitting updates. It may have helped that I submitted a Comment containing a short (~50 words) change summary with each one.
Well, my two extensions were also published today, after 35 days.
The first one was published 45 minutes after the extension of @nirantali, at Sep 29 2017 9:28:19 AM UTC, and the second one was published 3 minutes later, at Sep 29, 2017 9:26:13 AM UTC.
Thank you to the Opera Extensions Team.
I must update my June 19 post to report that I am now having the same problem as the rest of you all. I submitted very minor updates (1 or 2 lines changed) to my two extensions on August 25 and am now still waiting after 31 days, with not even any communication. Very sad.
(I too get instant reviews for all other browsers. Chrome's reviews are instant, Firefox' are instant for me because I distribute on my own, and Vivaldi's are instant because they use Chrome's Web Store.)
I submitted updates to my two extensions on Saturday 2017-06-17. They were approved and published two days later, on Monday 2017-06-19. "It works for me."
Thank you, @shwetankdixit. Maybe your changes have not been published yet, but in the documentation I still see this path:
/Library/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/...
That should be corrected to:
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/...
I'm not quite done yet but, so far, it looks like putting my Native Messaging manifest file in Google Chrome's Application Support folder in the user's Home directory is going to work.
So I've sent an update to DNAWIZ-3797 (My previous comment had wrong DNA number.)
@kszularz: Thank you, and please read on.
@janghour: Sorry I didn't quite understand your first posts. As I said earlier, my extension did not launch its native messaging tool when I installed a Native Messaging manifest file in the /Library/Google/Chrome… system directory as specified in the documentation, nor when I installed it in any reasonable Opera directory. However, just now I added the ID of the extension installed in Opera to the allowed_origins in Native Messaging manifest file I have installed for Chrome,
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts
and now, amazingly, my native messaging tool launches as expected when Opera loads my extension! My plans were to use the same native messaging tool for both Chrome and Opera, anyhow.
So, @kszularz, although it looks ridiculous, this might work, as is. I shall update my bug at DNAWIZ-3730 after doing some more testing.
After trying everything, I too have filed a new bug with the Opera Bug Wizard. The Opera Bug Wizard did not give me a Bug Number. All I got was this:
DNAWIZ-3797.
The remainder of this post is the text of my bug report.
I have developed browser extensions for many years, including one for Google Chrome, which uses their Native Messaging API. Even though Vivaldi does not provide any documentation, it works in Vivaldi the same as it does in Chrome, with obvious changes. I was able to install my extension and get it working in Vivaldi in less than an hour. But I cannot get it to work in Opera, and after trying every reasonable variation on the ambiguities in the documentation, I have concluded that the Native Messaging API does not work in Opera when running in mac OS (OS X). I am using Opera version 38.
When my extension runs in Opera, the line of JavaScript code which is supposed to open a port,
port = chrome.runtime.connectNative(hostName);
executes successfully (without raising) in a try{} block, and returns what appears to be a port object, but its properties are rather empty, and my native binary does not launch, as it does when my extension runs in Google Chrome or Vivaldi.
In looking at that documentation, I find it strange that my I am told to install my Native Messaging manifest file here:
First of all, the Google/Chrome subdirectory is owned by, you know, the wrong browser company. Second, because this path does not begin with a tilde (~) it is, eeeek, in a system-admin level directory. Because of this, I had to enter my administrator password twice in order to create the folder and put it there. Google Chrome gives you the option to put it in the user's directory instead, which I do for my Chrome extension.
I also tried putting my Native Messaging manifest file in other reasonable locations:
but none of these worked either.
In addition to the Google/Chrome path mentioned above, there are other indications that this documentation was never thoroughly reviewed and tested, for example,
Chrome starts the host in a separate process…
Obviously, this should have been changed to:
Opera starts the host in a separate process…
To resolve this issue, Opera staff should please review the documentation and make corrections as necessary so that they can make a simple example extension which works, and post a link to it in the documentation. Maybe I'm making some silly mistake, but, you know for something like this, with multiple moving parts, a working example is essential.
Thank you for reading.
Jerry Krinock
janghou, thank you very much for sharing your experience. I've been trying your various suggestions, but no success so far. Please clarify: when you got the example to work, were on running Linux or Apple macOS?
I tried to putting my special manifest file in a more logical location,
~/Library/Application Support/com.operasoftware.OperaDeveloper/NativeMessagingHosts
But still my messaging tool does not launch.
I've also looked through the Opera Add-Ons for another extension which I thought might be using Native Messaging but could not find any. I imagine that they would need to be associated with a native app that would install the manifest and messaging tool, like my extension.
Has anyone ever used Native Messaging in an Opera Extension? I wonder if this feature has ever been tested?
Thank you!
Hello,
I'm trying to port my Chrome extension to Opera. It uses Native Messaging to communicate with my native Macintosh (macOS) application. It's not working in Opera.
The line of JavaScript code which is supposed to open a port,
port = chrome.runtime.connectNative(hostName);
executes successfully (without raising) in a try{} block, and returns what appears to be a port object, but my messaging tool does not launch.
In looking at that documentation, I find it strange that my I am told to install my special manifest file here:
/Library/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/com.my_company.my_application.json
First of all, this is, eeeek, in the Google/Chrome subdirectory, which seems like the wrong company :)) Second, because this path does not begin with a tilde (~) it is, eeeek, in a system-admin level directory. Because of this, I had to enter my administrator password twice in order to create the folder and put it there. Google Chrome gives you the option to put it in the user's directory instead, which I do for my Chrome extension.
Is this just a copy and paste error from the Chrome documentation? If so, what is the correct location for the special manifest .json file?
Has anyone ever tested or used an Opera extension with Native Messaging on a Macintosh?
Thanks!