Chrome Extension - Invalid Package. Details:Can't unzip the extension

Question

I worked on a chrome extension and uploaded it to chrome webstore and everything went well, I installed it on my Mac and on my Ubuntu machines in chrome it worked fine and installed. But when I try it on Windows machines, after download it popups a error message saying "Invalid Package, Can't unzip the extension".

Can any one tell me why or what might be the cause for this OS specific issue. Does it have anything to do with the permission or anything with respective folder name or content? The folder name or the extension name don't have any special characters and the previous version was fine.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This is because there a file inside the package with a Windows invalid character in name or there a corrupted file. In my case I've tried to download the CouponsHelper extension and this error was displayed too.

I downloaded the CRX file manually and opened it with 7Zip. In the folder had a file named Icon. When I try to extract using 7Zip an error occurs too.

Note on the screenshot that there an invalid char in Icon file and that it is zero sized (possibly corrupted).

Answer 2

Another cause of this problem (Error: could not unzip extension) might be that you include the root directory in your zip. You should zip all files in the same level of manifest.json.

Example

-yourappfolder
   |_manifest.js
   |_popup.html

In this case you should zip only manifest.js and popup.html, instead of zip the entire directory yourappfolder.

In other words, in your zip file you should NOT see the yourappfolder directory.

Answer 3

So the trick it to compress all the files within the folder not the folder itself.

NOTE: If it's saved in Google Drive (local syncing) this well mess it up too. Drive attaches little icons to folders that show up as unknown.

So remake the folder outside of Google Drive. That's what was messing mine up after the "only compress inside of folder" fix.

Answer 4

I had the same problem but the reason was different.

I found that there is an image which has a name that is too long. When I replaced the name with a shorter one and built new package, it installed successfully.

I hope this helps anyone may facing the same problem.

Answer 5

A quick Google only turned up one possibly useful result but I wasn't sure if it would help.

Is that error message exactly what you see (i.e. word for word)? I couldn't find it in the code.

I may be wrong but I think this could be the code responsible for the error. Unfortunately, the zip::Unzip call can potentially fail for a number of reasons and only provides more details in the logs. I'm guessing such logs output to this location (Windows XP);

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\debug.log

None of this information may be useful to you but I thought I'd show you my investigation :)

Have you tried to install the extension again and do you have administration rights (not sure if this would have an affect here)?

Answer 6

I had the same problem but it was rejecting it because either the file was too big or the paths were too long (Windows...), which was because I accidentally included my entire node_modules directory in the .crx file.

Answer 7

I had a similar problem. My solution was:

1. unzip the CRX to a directory...lets say called freddy123

2. Rename "_manifest" to "manifest"..i.e remove the underscore.

3. Chrome->settings->More Tools->Extensions (Check Develop Mode Check box)
4. Load Unpacked extension (select freddy123 directory)

This worked for me.