Vite Plugin for DevTools Project Settings (devtools.json)

Vite plugin for generating the Chrome DevTools project settings file on-the-fly in the devserver.

This enables seamless integration with the new Chrome DevTools features

1. DevTools Project Settings (devtools.json), and
2. Automatic Workspace folders.

Installation

npm install -D vite-plugin-devtools-json

Usage

Add it to your Vite config

import {defineConfig} from 'vite';
import devtoolsJson from 'vite-plugin-devtools-json';

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [
    devtoolsJson(),
    // ...
  ]
});

While the plugin can generate a UUID and save it in vite cache, you can also specify it in the options like in the following:

  plugins: [
    devtoolsJson({ uuid: "6ec0bd7f-11c0-43da-975e-2a8ad9ebae0b" }),
    // ...
  ]

Options

Name	Type	Default	Description
projectRoot	string	config.root	Absolute path that will be reported to DevTools. Useful for monorepos or when the Vite root is not the desired folder.
normalizeForWindowsContainer	boolean	true	Convert Linux paths to UNC form so Chrome on Windows (WSL / Docker Desktop) can mount them (e.g. via WSL or Docker Desktop). Pass false to disable. Alias: normalizeForChrome (deprecated)_
uuid	string	auto-generated	Fixed UUID if you prefer to control it yourself.

Example with all options:

import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
import devtoolsJson from 'vite-plugin-devtools-json';

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [
    devtoolsJson({
      projectRoot: '/absolute/path/to/project',
      normalizeForWindowsContainer: true,
      uuid: '6ec0bd7f-11c0-43da-975e-2a8ad9ebae0b'
    })
  ]
});

The /.well-known/appspecific/com.chrome.devtools.json endpoint will serve the project settings as JSON with the following structure

{
  "workspace": {
    "root": "/path/to/project/root",
    "uuid": "6ec0bd7f-11c0-43da-975e-2a8ad9ebae0b"
  }
}

where root is the absolute path to your {projectRoot} folder, and uuid is a random v4 UUID, generated the first time that you start the Vite devserver with the plugin installed (it is henceforth cached in the Vite cache folder).

Checkout bmeurer/automatic-workspace-folders-vanilla for a trivial example project illustrating how to use the plugin in practice.

Publishing

The package is published to npm by the publish-on-tag GitHub Actions workflow, which uses npm trusted publishing (no npm tokens involved) and generates provenance attestations.

To publish a new version:

1. Bump the version in package.json and land that change on main.

2. Tag the release commit and push the tag:

   git tag v1.2.3
   git push origin v1.2.3

Pushing the tag triggers the workflow, which builds and tests the package and then runs npm publish.

License

The code is under MIT License.