wowp

A fast World of Warcraft addon builder and deployer for local development. This iteration was mostly vibe coded, but works OK for my purposes.

Features

• Parses .pkgmeta files
• Caches external dependencies for fast rebuilds
• Supports Git and SVN externals
• Deploys to multiple WoW clients (retail, classic, anniversary, forever, PTR, beta)
• Watch mode - automatically rebuilds on file changes
• Colored terminal output with progress indicators

Installation

git clone https://github.com/Tuller/wowp.git
cd wowp
pipx install .

Development

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• Git (for Git externals)
• SVN (for SVN externals)
• WOW_HOME environment variable set to your WoW installation directory

Usage

Run from your addon's directory (where .pkgmeta is located):

# Build and deploy to all flavors (retail + classic), live channel
wowp

# Watch mode - rebuild on file changes
wowp --watch               # or -w

# Deploy to specific flavors/channels
wowp --retail              # Retail only
wowp --classic             # Classic only
wowp --retail --ptr        # Retail PTR
wowp --classic --beta      # Classic Beta

# Combine watch with flavor/channel selection
wowp --watch --retail      # Watch and deploy to retail only

# Cache management
wowp --cache-info          # Show cache statistics
wowp --refresh-externals   # Force re-download all externals
wowp --clear-cache         # Clear the cache

Target Configuration

Flavors, channels, and the client directories they deploy to are defined in src/wowp/targets.yaml. Each name maps to $WOW_HOME/_<name>_/Interface/AddOns; directories that don't exist are skipped.

classic:
  live: [classic, classic_era, anniversary, forever]
  ptr: [classic_ptr, classic_era_ptr, anniversary_ptr, forever_ptr]

To customize, copy that file to ~/.config/wowp/targets.yaml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wowp/targets.yaml). If present, it replaces the bundled defaults entirely (so later additions to the bundled file won't reach you). The --flavor/--channel choices and the --<flavor>/--<channel> shorthand flags are generated from it; the default channel is the first one listed.

Supported .pkgmeta Features

• package-as - Package name
• externals - Git/SVN dependencies (simple and expanded format)
• move-folders - Directory restructuring for multi-addon packages
• ignore - File patterns to exclude
• @project-version@ keyword replacement in TOC files

Caching

External dependencies are cached at ~/.cache/wowp/externals/:

• Tagged or commit-pinned externals are cached forever
• Trunk/branch externals expire after 24 hours
• SVN repositories from the same base URL are fetched once and shared