I wrote a more extensive comment elsewhere, but for basic compiling a browser extension you can also simply use common tooling like rollup [0] where your manifest just points to the rollup generated files [1].
And if you forgo modern frameworks entirely, you can just have everything in one directory and run everything more or less directly from there [2].
As far as I am concerned, the structure and packaging of web extensions isn't what makes them complicated, although it does seem to be what a lot of people get hung up on. The web extension APIs and their interaction is often a bigger challenge. Publishing is also somewhat of a pain to deal with, although that is more the process around it and the lack of communication from both Mozilla and Google about it at times.
And if you forgo modern frameworks entirely, you can just have everything in one directory and run everything more or less directly from there [2].
As far as I am concerned, the structure and packaging of web extensions isn't what makes them complicated, although it does seem to be what a lot of people get hung up on. The web extension APIs and their interaction is often a bigger challenge. Publishing is also somewhat of a pain to deal with, although that is more the process around it and the lack of communication from both Mozilla and Google about it at times.
[0] https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/blo...
[1] https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/blo...
[2] https://github.com/creesch/readReddit