Chrome extension: Execute background page only once when chrome starts

Question

I am playing with chrome extensions, my manifest loads a background page with:

...
"background": { "scripts": ["background_page.js"]         


        

Answer 1

To expand on quackkkk's answer, omitting the "persistent" key in the manifest.json is the same as setting it to "persistent": true

The proof:

In the docs, it says that:

The only occasion to keep a background script persistently active is if the extension uses chrome.webRequest API to block or modify network requests. The webRequest API is incompatible with non-persistent background pages.

with that in mind, we can check out the manifest.json one of the extension sample projects, No Cookies, that uses the webRequest API and see that it does not explicitly set "persistent"