Chrome's webstore server reject an extension with "Error : The manifest must define a version."

Question

NOTE: this question is about the version attribute of the manifest.json that you use when you do Chrome developpment. It looks similar with the question below about manifest_version but it's not. I really tried to learn from that but I failed.

Need to update Chrome extension to manifest version 2 if no manifest version originally specified?

--

I am currently doing my first Chrome extension. Powerful, fun, great.

Except a stupid thing that keeps annoying me.

My Chrome extension is open-source, so you can go straight to the code on GitHub so you can see in an instant that I made a stupid mistake

https://github.com/internaciulo/search-tab-in-chrome-s-omnibox

In manifest.json, the most imortant file in Chrome development, you should see

{
  ...
  "version": "13",
  ...
}

The chrome extension itself works well enough, see the screenshots folder on github, ... but only locally, that is when I open it as an unpackage app (this can be done in Chrome by going into chrome://extensions

Great, so I head up to [Chrome's Webstore Developer Dashbord], upload, let 2 or 3 users download it for free, Profit !

---

Not quite.

I tried everything : maybe he wants 13or "13" or "13.0" or there is a confusion with manifest_version which must be an integer or or or or. Every time the same annoying error :

Upload an extension or app (.zip file)
search-tab-in-chrome-s-omnibox.zip (Server rejected)
An error occurred: Failed to process your item.

The manifest must define a version.

Oh Computers, you are so useful, but why are so intolerants to our mistakes dear computer ? Yes, they are stupid, but since the beginning of Computing, you should have learned that we are "Humans, All Too Humans" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human,_All_Too_Human)

PS: it's not only my first chrome extension, it's also my first question on stackoverflow, while I used it a lost in the past, but only read-only. Please be nice :-D

Updates:

• 2013-10-13 : ok, problem solved, this was it : no comments in json files
• 2013-10-13 : A part (only) of the bug is resolved thanks to @ChrisP: comments are not allowed in json files, which is sad but legitimate. https://github.com/getify/JSON.minify allows you to take json file with comments and output it minified without comments. Best of both worlds.

Answer 1

Your manifest.json file contains comments:

{
  "name": "__MSG_name__", // {en}: "Search Tab in Chrome's Omnibox" 
  "description": "__MSG_description__",
  ...
}

which are not allowed in JSON, cf http://json.org/.

If you remove them, your manifest should be valid, and the error should disappear. You can find JSON parsers online to ensure it's valid, for example:

• http://www.jsoneditoronline.org/
• http://json.parser.online.fr/