instawow 0.14

A CLI for managing World of Warcraft add-ons.

instawow is a fledgling package manager for World of Warcraft written in Python. It can be used to install, remove and update add-ons from Curse, WoWInterface and Tukui.

Installation

Assuming you have Python 3.6 or higher:

pip3 install instawow

Usage

Installing add-ons

You can install add-ons by their Curse project ID or slug, or their WoWInterface ID, or even by their URL. All of the following will install Molinari:

instawow install curse:20338
instawow install curse:molinari
instawow install https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/molinari
instawow install https://wow.curseforge.com/projects/molinari
instawow install wowi:13188
instawow install https://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13188-Molinari.html

By default instawow will install the latest file to have been officially published. You may also install the latest file to have been uploaded (on the CurseForge or WowAce), be it stable, or beta or alpha quality, by passing --strategy=latest.

Configuring add-ons

You can opt into alpha updates anytime with instawow set --strategy=latest <add-on> and revert to receiving stable updates with instawow set --strategy=canonical <add-on>.

Updating

You can update all of your add-ons in one go with instawow update or any individual add-on the same way you’d install or remove it: instawow update <add-on>.

Uninstalling

Uninstalling an add-on is as simple as instawow remove <add-on>.

Other operations

You may list installed add-ons with instawow list installed; outdated add-ons with instawow list outdated; and pre-existing add-ons with instawow list preexisting. The latter command will attempt to reconcile add-on folders with their corresponding Curse IDs, where available.

To see information about an installed add-on, execute instawow info <add-on>. To visit its homepage, execute instawow hearth <add-on>. And to open its main folder in your file manager, run instawow reveal <add-on>.

Extras

instawow ships with a BitBar plug-in for macOS, which you can use to update add-ons from the menu bar. To install the plug-in run instawow extras bitbar install.

Caveats

Auto-detection

instawow will only manage add-ons it itself installed because it has no registry from which to derive add-on fingerprings. The Twitch (née Curse) client uses a proprietary fingerprinting algo that nobody (that I know) has been able to figure out how is calculated. Even if the fingerprint had been reverse-engineered, I’d be loath to adopt it. Ideologically because it was born of a desire to monopolise the add-on distribution market and practically because we could never know when Curse might pull the rug from under our feet. WoWI’s Minion app also implements a similar though less sophisticated fingerprinting technique.

Metadata freshness

The Twitch client uses a closed metadata API internally. Because the API was not built for third-party use it has 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 is 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. Instead, instawow relies solely on official data dumps or ‘feeds’. This approach is not without its drawbacks:

• There are sometimes gaps in the Curse feeds with multiple add-ons being lost in the Twisting Nether until they invariably reappear a few hours later, ostensibly unharmed.

• The feeds are updated at least once hourly. Therefore you might receive add-on updates with up to an hour’s delay depending on the Δt between a new file being uploaded and the feed being updated.

By contrast Minion uses an undocumented but open JSON API, which instawow does communicate with.

Because it has a much shorter execution cycle than a desktop app, instawow caches add-on metadata for one hour. If you do for whatever reason need to force an early resync you can do so with instawow debug cache invalidate.

Discovery

instawow aims to facilitate add-on management and not discovery. It does not seek to drive users away from add-on portals; but to make installing, updating and removing add-ons found on portals hassle-free for those of us who are (ever so slightly) proficient with the command line and do not particularly relish in using bloatware or inhabiting walled gardens.

Development

Fork and clone the repo, cd and:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/active
python3 -m pip install -e .

Happy hacking.

Contributing

Bug reports and fixes are welcome. Do open an issue before committing to making any significant changes.