wow-build-tools

This repository aims to be a collection of tools to help with the development of World of Warcraft addons. The main focus is on speed and ease of use, with the goal of making the development process as smooth as possible.

Installation

Once this project is out of beta, the installation process should be a one-time thing as the tool is written to self update on non-pre-release versions. For now, you'll need to manually download the latest version of the tool when new versions are released.

Local

Head over to the releases page and download the latest release for your operating system and architecture.

• Windows? it's likely going to be the wow-build-tools_windows_amd64.zip file.
• Linux or WSL? you'll likely want the wow-build-tools_linux_amd64.zip file.
• macOS? you'll want to double-check if you have an Intel (darwin_amd64.zip) or Apple Silicon (darwin_arm64.zip) processor, and download the appropriate file.

Extract the contents of the zip file to a directory of your choosing, and add that directory to your PATH if you'd like to use the tool from anywhere on your system.

GitHub Actions

If you're looking to use wow-build-tools in a GitHub Action, you can use the following example workflow:

name: Package and release

on:
  release:
    types:
      - published

permissions: {}

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
    env:
      CF_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.CF_API_KEY }} # CurseForge API Key, required for uploading to CurseForge
      WOWI_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.WOWI_API_TOKEN }} # WoWInterface API Token, required for uploading to WoWInterface
      WAGO_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.WAGO_API_TOKEN }} # Wago.io API Token, required for uploading to Wago.io

    steps:
      - name: Clone project
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - name: Package and release
        env:
          # GitHub Token, required for creating releases
          GITHUB_OAUTH: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        uses: McTalian/wow-build-tools@v1-beta

Features

I have many plans for this project, and I will communicate those plans at a later date.

BigWigsMods/packager feature parity

To start, I'd like wow-build-tools to be as close to a drop-in replacement for BigWigsMods/packager as possible. That means, ideally, it should be able to handle all of the same features as packager with the same level of ease and speed or better.

For feature parity progress, please see the BigWigsMods/packager feature parity wiki page

Additional features

In addition to feature parity with BigWigsMods/packager, I have a few ideas for additional features that I think would be useful for addon authors:

• Autoupdating the tool itself
• More token replacements
• Use GitHub Release contents as a source for the changelog
• Guided tour of the tool
• Various warnings and checks to help catch issues with the addon before packaging
  • Missing embedded library Curse attributions
• Monorepo support
• Automatic propagation of addon changes to all installed and compatible game versions (available via config and link commands)
• Option to create a Lua version of the changelog
• New Addon Scaffolding
• A badge to proudly display that your addon is built with wow-build-tools!

Inspiration and acknowledgements

My main inspiration comes from my desire to always make developer experience as smooth as possible. I've had a few different roles across different companies and industries that have focused on developer experience, and I've always found it to be a rewarding challenge and a force multiplier for teams. What better way to give back to the WoW community than to align my passions and expertise to help make the development process easier for addon authors?

I was also heavily inspired by BigWigsMods/packager which provides (to my knowledge) the most widely used tool for packaging addons for distribution via CurseForge, WoWInterface, and Wago.io. Thank you to the authors and contributors of that project for all of their hard work and dedication!