Tool to update World of Warcraft AddOns hosted on GitHub or GitLab

Features

• Pure Python: only Dulwich, Colorlog and PyYAML
• Multithreaded tasks
• Manual and automatic modes
• Able to start the game after an updates
• Automatic backup of updatable AddOns (up to the last 5)
• Automatic detection of AddOn directories (aka modules)

Usage

Before running this script for the first time, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND making a backup of your Interface folder: something bad is unlikely to happen, but just in case

Configuration file

Before using this script, you need to configure the list of repositories (AddOns) for updating. Just see how this is done in the config_example.json or config_example.yaml files. Just choose what you are more comfortable with.
In general terms, they are JSON and YAML structures, where you need to specify the repository URL and the branch you want to clone (usually it will be master or main).

JSON	YAML
{ "URL1" : "master", "URL2" : "master" }	URL1 : master URL2 : master # URL3 : main
Curly brackets, quotation marks, colons, and commas are mandatory You can't use comments	Only colons are mandatory Allows to create comment blocks

Help page

When you run the script from the release version or the source code with the -h parameter, the help page will be displayed:

optional arguments

Argument	Abbrev	Description	Example
--help	-h	show help message and exit	-h
--start	-s	start Wow.exe after update	-s
--verbose		verbose debug output	--verbose

required arguments

Argument	Abbrev	Description	Examples
--vault	-v	new or existing Vault name	-v github
--wow	-w	path to Wow.exe	-w "G:\World of Warcraft 3.3.5a HD\Wow.exe" -w ".\Wow.exe"
--config	-c	path to config file	-c ".\config_335a.yaml" -c ".\new_config.json"

Launching from RELEASE version

1. Download latest release
2. Unpack to any folder
3. Copy and edit config.yaml or config.json as you need (see Configuration paragraph)
4. Run app with the -h parameter via cmd or powershell to read the help
5. As an example, use one of the following commands:
   .\app.exe -v github -w ..\wow\Wow.exe -c .\config.yaml -s --verbose
.\AddOnsUpdateTool.exe -v github -w ..\wow\Wow.exe -c .\config.json -s --verbose
   or the next one if you put AddOnsUpdateTool.exe and Config file in the game folder:
   .\AddOnsUpdateTool.exe -v github -w -c -s --verbose
   or even just start AddOnsUpdateTool.exe inside game folder (but in this case the game will not start after update, 'cause not provided -s argument)
6. If you want, you can create a shortcut to start with the necessary arguments and place it on the desktop or start menu

Launching from SOURCE code

Running the script from source code will require some knowledge of both Git and Cmd/Powershell

Requirements

• Install Python 3.8 (recommended)
• Install Pipenv package via pip install -U pipenv

Prepare

• Clone this repository
• Run pipenv install inside repository directory
• If successful, you can use pipenv shell to open Pipenv Venv Shell inside

Launch

• Use python .\app.py -h inside Pipenv Venv Shell to see the help page

Dev dependencies

Python dev and recommended build: Python 3.8.10 [64 bit (AMD64)]
Pipenv profile includes pyinstaller package (for packing code into PE (.exe) file) that you can install via pipenv install --dev command.
If you want to change something in the code, I strongly recommend that you set the PEP-8 linters such as pylint, bandit, flake8, also code formatter black.
Dont forget to re-format code after changes to keep it within the PEP-8.

Creating an EXE

To package a set of scripts into a standalone distributable directory, or a single EXE file, use the pyinstaller module:

• pipenv run pyinstaller --onefile .\app.py -- for single EXE file (smaller size, but slower runtime due to the temp cache)
• pipenv run pyinstaller .\AddonsUpdateTool_dir.spec -- for standalone directory (larger whole folder size, but fast runtime)

Additional information

In addition to app.py I also provide scripts to manually update the Vault DB and the Game DB: vault_updater.py and game_updater.py. You can also use the -h argument to view the help page