Self-signed crx displayed as corrupted in Google Chrome 63

Question

Looks like starting from the Google Chrome 63 loading self-signed crx file fails with a message: "This extension may have been corrupted". From the browser logs I see that Chrome is trying to check the verified contents from the store, and, of course, failing.

content_hash_fetcher.cc(252)] Missing verified contents for cfbklnofppkbgcfhppceodfodekoecoa, fetching...
job failed for cfbklnofppkbgcfhppceodfodekoecoa reason:1
VerifyFailed cfbklnofppkbgcfhppceodfodekoecoa reason:1

That's happening for all extensions I can check. Self-signed crx were disabled on reloading Chrome for a while now, but that was mostly OK for basic testing. Now it seems to be not possible at all. Is there a way to install extensions for testing on Chrome 63?

Installing unpacked extensions works (for now), but that's not the same as installing crx. We had some issues which were not happening with unpacked extensions, mostly with init and storages.

UPD: the issue is tracked here https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=794219

Answer 1

Not sure exactly why this is happening, but the "fix" for us was to put a dummy update_url key in the manifest.json for the extension:

"update_url": "https://www.google.com"

Any old URL will do.

Warning: You will need to remove this before deploying to the Chrome Web Store as it might break your users' upgrade process.

Chrome bug this is the chrome bug tracking this issue. Please star it so that it gets some attention https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=794219

Also not sure if this will continue to work in the future.