what is web-ext-run fr?

This repo, web-ext-run, is a stripped-down fork of Mozilla's web-ext tool that keeps only the ability to launch a browser extension during development. When you are building a browser extension, you want to see your changes appear in Firefox as quickly as possible. This tool handles that, it opens Firefox with your extension loaded, and can reload it when you make changes. The original Mozilla tool it comes from is a Swiss Army knife for extension developers. It can build, lint, sign, and run extensions, among other things. But if you only need the "run" part, pulling in the full tool brings along a lot of extra baggage in the form of dependencies, other software packages it depends on. This fork cuts everything else out, leaving just the JavaScript API for launching an extension in a browser. You call it from your code, point it at your extension's source folder, and it opens Firefox with your extension ready to go. The primary audience is developers building their own tooling for browser extension development. The creator made this fork specifically for two projects: WXT and vite-plugin-web-extension, both of which are build tools that help people create extensions more easily. Those tools need a way to automatically open Firefox during development, and using the full Mozilla tool caused dependency conflicts. If you are building a similar development tool or workflow and just need the launch-and-reload capability, this is for you. If you are an individual extension developer looking for a command-line tool, you would be better served by the original Mozilla project. The notable tradeoff here is simplicity over completeness. By keeping only the run API, this fork is lighter and easier to integrate, but it gives up the linting, signing, and packaging features of the parent project. The README notes that the underlying API has limited support and may change between versions, which is worth keeping in mind if you depend on it for production tooling.