How do I perform a shell execute in a chrome extension?
If you want to do anything Natively, you need to use NPAPI. That allows you to run code outside the sandbox for your extensions.
http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/npapi.html
To update this for a fellow wary lonesome traveler, even NPAPI is deprecated and being phased out. One of the alternatives mentioned in the NPAPI decprecation blog post that looks suitable for this type of problem (and pretty nifty really) is the Native Messaging API.
Alternatively, you might want to have two applications:
- a "client" that works within a chrome extension and
- a "local server" where the actual command is executed.
Whenever the extension needs to execute a command, it can connect to the local server via tcp connection.