instawow
instawow is an add-on manager for World of Warcraft. It can be used to install, update and remove add-ons from GitHub, CurseForge, WoWInterface, Tukui and Wago Addons. instawow has an interoperable CLI and GUI, fuzzy search with download scoring and several other goodies.
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Installation
You can download pre-built binaries of instawow from GitHub. bin users can install the CLI binaries by running:
bin install github.com/layday/instawow
If you’d prefer to install instawow from source, you are able to choose from:
pipx: pipx install instawow
uv: uv tool install instawow
Nix and NixOS: the CLI-only version of instawow is available as the instawow package
CLI operation
tl;dr
Begin by running instawow reconcile to register previously-installed add-ons with instawow (or instawow reconcile --auto to do the same without user input). To install add-ons, you can search for them using the search command:
instawow search masque
In addition, instawow is able to interpret add-on URLs and instawow-specific URIs of slugs and host IDs. All of the following will install Masque:
instawow install https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/masque instawow install curse:masque instawow install curse:13592 instawow install https://github.com/SFX-WoW/Masque instawow install github:sfx-wow/masque
You can update add-ons and remove them just as you’d install them. If update is invoked without arguments, it will update all of your installed add-ons. You can list add-ons and view detailed information about them using list --format detailed. For list and other similarly non-destructive commands, the source can be omitted and the alias can be shortened, e.g. instawow reveal masq will bring up the Masque add-on folder in your file manager.
Add-on reconciliation
instawow will not automatically take ownership of your add-ons. To start receiving add-on updates for pre-installed add-ons, you must run instawow reconcile. For each add-on you have installed, reconcile will ask you to select a remote add-on from a list of candidates. This process can be automated with reconcile --auto. Any add-on which is reconciled is reinstalled because the installed version cannot be reliably extracted from installed add-on metadata.
Add-on re-reconciliation
instawow is able to suggest alternative sources for any add-on you have installed via instawow rereconcile. rereconcile takes any number of add-on definitions as arguments. All of the following are valid:
instawow rereconcile instawow rereconcile curse: instawow rereconcile curse:masque instawow rereconcile curse:masque github:layday/some-addon wowi:
Add-on search
instawow comes with a rudimentary search command with results ranked based on edit distance and popularity. Search uses a collated add-on catalogue which is updated once daily. You can install multiple add-ons directly from search.
Install strategies
Add-ons take a number of options which determine how they are resolved:
any_flavour to ignore game version compatibility by prioriting “affine” game versions
any_release_type to ignore add-on stability
version_eq=[VERSION] to install a specific add-on version
The default strategy set is empty. In the CLI, you can define strategies in the fragment portion of the add-on URI, separated by a comma, e.g. instawow install curse:masque#any_release_type,any_flavour. Strategies are respected by install and update. To reset an add-on’s strategies on update, you can specify a null fragment, e.g. instawow update curse:masque#=.
Reverting add-on updates
instawow keeps a log of all versions of an add-on it has previously installed. Add-on updates can be undone using the instawow rollback command. Add-ons which have been rolled back are pinned and will not receive updates. Rollbacks can themselves be undone with instawow rollback --undo, which will install the latest version of the specified add-on using the default strategy.
Profiles
Multi-flavour management is accomplished using profiles. Assuming your default profile is configured for retail, you can create a pristine profile for classic with:
instawow -p classic configure
“classic” is simply the name of the profile; you will be asked to select the installation folder, or to provide the add-on folder and game flavour if an installation cannot be found or the flavour cannot be inferred.
-p is a global option. You can prefix any instawow command with -p, e.g. to update your new profile’s add-ons, you would run:
instawow -p classic update
You can omit -p for the default profile if one exists.
Migrating Classic profiles
With the exception of “Classic Era” profiles (vanilla_classic in instawow parlance), classic profiles will start receiving updates for the latest Classic release once it is supported by instawow. You would not need to override the profile’s flavour.
WeakAura updater
instawow contains a WeakAura updater modelled after WeakAuras Companion. To use the updater and provided that you have WeakAuras installed:
instawow plugins weakauras-companion build instawow install instawow:weakauras-companion
You will have to rebuild the companion add-on before invoking instawow update to receive aura updates. If you would like to check for updates on every instawow update, install the instawow:weakauras-companion-autoupdate variant, omitting the build step:
instawow install instawow:weakauras-companion-autoupdate
Plug-ins
instawow can be extended using plug-ins. Plug-ins can be used to add support for arbitrary hosts and add new commands to the CLI. You will find a sample plug-in in tests/plugin.
Configuration directories
instawow conforms to the XDG base directory standard and will respect XDG environment variables on all platforms, if set. The following directories are used by instawow:
{cache-home }/instawow, corresponding to $XDG_CACHE_HOME
{config-home}/instawow, corresponding to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
{state-home }/instawow, corresponding to $XDG_STATE_HOME
{temp-home }/instawowt
On macOS and Windows, the configuration and state directories are combined if XDG is not in use.
The active directory paths are printed by instawow debug config and the cache can be purged with instawow cache clear.
Metadata sourcing
CurseForge
CurseForge is set to retire its unauthenticated add-on API by the end of Q1 2022. CurseForge will be issuing keys for the new API conditionally and which add-on managers are obligated to conceal. The new API is therefore unworkable for add-on managers except through a proxy service, which the author of this particular add-on manager cannot afford. At the same time, CurseForge will be providing the option for authors to unlist their add-ons from the new API, and downloads intitiated through the new API will not count towards author credits for the ad revenue sharing programme.
GitHub
instawow supports WoW add-ons released on GitHub – that is to say that the repository must have a release (tags won’t work) and the release must have an add-on ZIP file attached to it as an asset. instawow will not install or build add-ons directly from source, or from tarballs or ‘zipballs’, and will not validate the contents of the ZIP file.
Transparency
Web requests initiated by instawow can be identified by its user agent string.
Every 24 hours, on launch, instawow will query PyPI – the canonical Python package index – to check for instawow updates.
Contributing
Bug reports and fixes are welcome. Do open an issue before committing to making any significant changes.
1 maintainer
Metadata
1 maintainer
Release files for instawow 7.2.1
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
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| instawow-7.2.1.tar.gz | 878.5 kB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| instawow-7.2.1-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 987.8 kB
Release files / instawow-7.2.1.tar.gz
| Download URL | instawow-7.2.1.tar.gz |
|---|---|
| Size | 878.5 kB |
| Tags | Source |
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SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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Release files / instawow-7.2.1-py3-none-any.whl
| Download URL | instawow-7.2.1-py3-none-any.whl |
|---|---|
| Size | 109.2 kB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
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Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing? |
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