A CLI for managing World of Warcraft add-ons.
Project description
instawow is a package manager for World of Warcraft, written in Python. It can be used to install, remove and update add-ons from WoWInterface, CurseForge and Tukui.
instawow tries to make installing, updating and removing add-ons quick and painless for those of us who are (ever so slightly) proficient with the command line and do not revel in using bloatware which infringe on our privacy or inhabiting walled gardens.
Installation
I recommend installing instawow in an isolated environment. pipx makes this easy:
pipx install instawow
Or using Nix:
nix-env -if https://github.com/layday/instawow-nix/tarball/master
Installing with pip is also supported:
pip3 install --upgrade instawow
Getting started
instawow is able to interpret add-on URLs, slugs and IDs. All of the following will install Molinari:
instawow install https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/molinari instawow install curse:molinari instawow install curse:20338 instawow install https://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13188-Molinari.html instawow install wowi:13188
The update and remove commands work in the same way, and update can be run without arguments to update all add-ons.
You can opt into alpha and beta quality add-ons from CurseForge using the --with-strategy option on install.
Use list to list add-ons managed by instawow; list-folders -e to list unmanaged add-ons; info to display add-on information, visit to open an add-on homepage in your browser and reveal to open the primary add-on folder in your file manager.
Non-destructive operations accept partial definitions, e.g. instawow info moli will display information about Molinari.
instafying add-ons
instawow does not know about add-ons it did not itself install. The Twitch and Minion clients each use their own, proprietary fingerprinting algorithm to reconcile add-ons you have installed with add-ons their respective hosts keep on their servers. Though the details of their implementation elude me, instawow tries to accomplish something similar by combining a variety of cues (e.g. folders and TOC entries). This is not done automatically; you will need to execute instawow reconcile to absorb add-ons installed through other means.
Searching for add-ons
instawow comes with a rudimentary search command which allows you to select add-ons to install. The search does not display add-on details other than the name and source; pressing <o> will bring the add-on page up in your browser. The search uses a collated add-on name catalogue internally which is updated once daily.
WoW Classic
instawow supports Classic – it will correctly install Classic versions of add-ons from sources depending on the value of the game_flavour configuration setting. What instawow does not have is a switch you can flick to go from managing your retail add-ons to managing your classic add-ons and vice versa. This was a conscious design decision, the merits of which (I should admit) are open to debate. If you are already using instawow for retail, you will need to create a separate profile for Classic. On Linux, this might be:
env INSTAWOW_CONFIG_DIR=~/.config/instawow-classic instawow
For ease of use, you might want to set up an alias. In your Bash profile, add:
alias instawow-classic='INSTAWOW_CONFIG_DIR=~/.config/instawow-classic instawow'
You would then be able to invoke instawow using instawow-classic.
Additional functionality
WeakAuras aura updater
instawow contains a WeakAuras updater modelled on WeakAuras Companion. To use the updater and provided that you have WeakAuras installed:
instawow weakauras-companion build -a <your account name> instawow install instawow:weakauras-companion
You will have to rebuild the companion add-on prior to updating to receive aura updates. If you would like to check for updates on every invocation of instawow update, install the instawow:weakauras-companion-autoupdate variant, exposing your account name as an env var:
env WAC_ACCOUNT=<your account name> instawow install instawow:weakauras-companion-autoupdate env WAC_ACCOUNT=<your account name> instawow update
You may then choose to bypass the companion add-on simply by ommitting the env var.
Metadata sourcing
Originally, instawow relied on the official feeds provided by Curse. Curse retired the feeds in June 2018 and – for a period – instawow would scrape the CurseForge website. The alternative would have been to use the old XML-like API. Because the API was not built for third-party use, it had not been isolated from user accounts (cf. GitHub integrations). If users were to log into the API, instawow would acquire full access to their account. Authentication was also complicated by the ongoing Curse account migration to Twitch and is (or should be) unnecessary for the simple use case of installing and updating add-ons. Thankfully, Twitch migrated to an unauthenticated API interally in Q2 2019, which we have adopted for our own use. This is similar to what Minion, the WoWInterface-branded add-on manager, has been doing for years. The good people at Tukui provide an API for public use. instawow might break whenever one of our sources introduces a change to their website or API (though only temporarily).
Remote hosts
When installing, updating or searching for add-ons, instawow will retrieve scraped add-on metadata from https://raw.githubusercontent.com, CurseForge add-on metadata from https://addons-ecs.forgesvc.net, WoWInterface add-on metadata from https://api.mmoui.com, Tukui add-on metadata from https://www.tukui.org, and aura data from https://data.wago.io; and will follow file URLs contained in metadata.
Every 24 hours, on launch, instawow will query PyPI (https://pypi.org) – the canonical Python package repository – to suggest updating instawow to the latest version.
Requests made by instawow can be identified by its user agent string.
Contributing
Bug reports and fixes are welcome. Do open an issue before committing to making any significant changes.
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