Do source maps work for Chrome extensions?

I know I'm incredibly late to the party, but Chrome DOES allow source maps. The problem you may be having is that it refuses to load the maps by default. This can be fixed by adding the map to the web_accessible_resources in your manifest.json file.

I had the same problem and after switching to inline source maps, everything worked fine.

The reason is, that chrome extension only support inline source mpas

so, when you use webpack, just add

devtool: "inline-source-map"

There are a range of options possible, see the table in webpack documentation here.

In the spirit of providing answers to questions resolved in comments, Chrome previously did not support the use of source maps in extensions but this was rectified as of Chrome 29.

Thanks to the commenter, @w00kie who filed and tracked the bug on Chromium - if you wish to receive reputation for your helpful effort just post your own answer and I will delete this one.