Firefox console shows "Attempt to postMessage on disconnected port" from Apollo extension

[swrobel]

Intended outcome:
No extraneous errors are shown in Firefox browser console

Actual outcome:
Every browser tab for a site that doesn't use Apollo (ex: github) shows this in the console:

Error: Attempt to postMessage on disconnected port [tab.js:1:3247](moz-extension://8d7e5e49-00fa-624f-b1ba-d10fd33b0a05/tab.js)
    sendPortMessage resource://gre/modules/ExtensionChild.jsm:312

How to reproduce the issue:

Load any page that doesn't use Apollo (this page will do) in Firefox with the Apollo Client Devtools extension installed

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: macOS 13.2.1
• Browser: Firefox
• Browser version: 111.0.1
• Extension version 4.1.4

[phryneas]

Thank you for the bug report, I can reproduce this.

Note for further reproduction: only happens when reloading the page while the DevTools are open.

[abarreir]

I've further investigated this issue, and the extension panel stops working after some idle time 100% of the time. A similar issue happened to vuejs devtools vuejs/devtools#1974, making the background script persistent in the manifest file fixed the issue.

I've tested the fix locally and can confirm the content script stops losing connection to the background script. Please note that the issue is not reproducible when inspecting the background script with firefox devtools, since this prevents the script from going idle :