End of support for the Twitch Developer Rig

In 2018, we introduced the Twitch Developer Rig with RFC0004 and launched the beta version in the same year. This native application provided an alternative approach for getting started with an Extension by providing templates, view testing, configuration service management, and Bits-product management. The Developer Rig has helped many developers begin their Extensions journey by centralizing these aspects of development.

Due to portions of the Developer Rig being powered by deprecated internal services and Bits product management becoming available in the developer console, we have made the decision to end support for this application on or soon after January 31, 2023.

What to expect when support ends

Any developer who continues to use the Developer Rig after the above date can expect the following behaviors.

Projects

New projects will no longer be able to be created for an existing Twitch Extension.

Extension Views

There should be no noticeable change. Existing projects will be able to test their Extension views.

Monetization

The monetization tab in the Developer Rig will no longer be available to manage Bits-in-Extensions. Bits product management is now available in the developer console and is the recommended alternative to the Rig. In conjunction with this announcement, Bits product management in the developer console is now considered generally available (promoted from its open beta launch in December). It is also possible to manage Bits products directly with Twitch API endpoints.

Configuration Service

There should be no noticeable change. Existing projects can continue to use this tab to manage configuration service segments. It is also possible to use the configuration service Twitch API endpoints.

Documentation

Documentation on the developer website will be updated today to indicate the end of support timeline. Resources will be updated to remove mention of the Developer Rig on or soon after the date above.

What action needs to be taken?

Review the behaviors above to consider any changes to your current Extension development workflow. We are also aware that members of the community have built alternative tools and services for Extension developers, and we encourage the sharing of additional resources below if they are helpful to others.

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F o7

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TOOT OWN HORN: GitHub - BarryCarlyon/twitch_extension_tools: Tools for Twitch Developers to assist them working on a Twitch Extension

Available for Windows and Mac (and the Mac App Store)

Check the supported features list - GitHub - BarryCarlyon/twitch_extension_tools: Tools for Twitch Developers to assist them working on a Twitch Extension

See also: End of support for the Twitch Developer Rig - #7 by BarryCarlyon for another tool!

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Hey @jbulava,

Quick question, do you think it’s possible to make the Developer Rig open source so the community can take care of it?

I’m facing an issue where there’s no tool available to simulate Extension Views, and I have around 15 different views within my extension. Creating 15 Twitch accounts to test them out is just not feasible.

Thanks!

Open sourcing the Rig was discussed, but it was not possible within the timeline for when the underlying internal services were going offline. While it may be possible in the future, there are no active plans to rewrite the Rig to remove the internal source code and make it available publicly.

That being said, if you already have the Developer Rig installed, simulating Extension views should still function as expected.

The view testing part of the Rig should still work.

But it’s difficult to add/change the version of an extension in order to do that testing.

I’ve create a tool that will allow users to inject a project into the rig, bypassing the checks/looksup the rig tries and now fails to do

Windows only right now but this should help some people out.

The Developer Rig Manifester - GitHub - BarryCarlyon/twitch_developerrig_manifester: Lets you add a manifest to the deprecated Twitch Developer Rig bypassing any checks the rig tries and fails to do

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Erm, since The Developer Rig is no more, how the hell are we suppose to test our Overlay Extension out?
Testing the Panel one is easy, but not the Overlay Ones.

Regards

Paul

By going live on the channel you wish to test on.

If you still have the developer rig downloaded, I wrote a tool that’ll update the developer rig config, so you could use the rig, however the optimal test scenario is on a “live”/real channel.

I do al my testing on one of my few test/alt channels for optimal testing.

It’s a lot easier to install my extensions to barrycarlyonbot and test as a viewer using it when I’m me. But depends on my test criteria

Sadly I don’t have that, also I didn’t really want to go live just to do this, its a shame that they just gave up on a tool that is really needed to develop extensions.
I could I guess just create a channel and use that, then I could just mute and just display an image, I just think its sill that they went this route.

Unless somebody has the Developer Rig downloaded that could zip it up for me?

regards

Paul

I can check if I do but you’ll still need GitHub - BarryCarlyon/twitch_developerrig_manifester: Lets you add a manifest to the deprecated Twitch Developer Rig bypassing any checks the rig tries and fails to do to force load the configuration into the Rig as the Rig can no longer fetch it itself. And I’ve not tested it against a “clean” rig install.

I use FFMPEG to send an image twitch_misc/extensions/test_stream at main · BarryCarlyon/twitch_misc · GitHub

It should be noted that the Developer Rig never fully emulated the requirements for an Extension on Twitch, such as CSP, so it was never a substitute for testing on Twitch itself anyway.

Yeah I just wanted something so that I can see as I work on it, but sadly you can only do that while streaming.
Is there any plans to add a tool that lets you view the extensions especially the video ones?

Regards
Paul

Nothing I’m aware of

And even less likely due to the recent reduction in staff.

Especially when you can test on “production” on a test channel

Well that is a shame, well I will have to put more time aside then to work on this part later on then.

Maybe you might know, but I can see this link (shown below) and I am aware this is when it becomes hosted:

https://{SOME_HASH}.ext-twitch.tv/{SOME_HASH}/{VERSION}/{SOME_NUMBER}/video_overlay.html?...

I know that SOME_HASH is the Client_ID possibly, but what is SOME_NUMBER ?

https://{SOME_HASH}.ext-twitch.tv/{SOME_HASH}/{VERSION}/{SOME_NUMBER}/video_overlay.html?...

is actually

https://{CLIENT-ID}.ext-twitch.tv/{CLIENT-ID}/{VERSION}/{SOME_HASH}/video_overlay.html?...

Course you shouldn’t load it directly anyway, as it has to be loaded inside Supervisor

Ok, so I was right about the Client_ID, but what is that SOME_HASH from, is it a JWT from some number signed with the CLIENT_SECRET.

Oh this Iframe:

https://supervisor.ext-twitch.tv/supervisor/v1/index.html

Yeah I know, just trying to look through it all to see what its doing in hope to do something that helps view it when offline.

I don’t think so.

I’ve never looked into it, it could be the md5 hash of the zip file that was uploaded. But I’ve never looked at it further

Oh I never thought of that, I know its a 16 byte (128bit) number, so maybe.
I will have to see later on.