Alternatives to CurseForge / WowAce for repositories and package manager / builder
 

CurseForge and WowAce websites moved to Overwolf on Nov 30. While the websites themselves have returned, the SVN repositories are not in the state they were before the move but appear to be weeks (if not months) old. The package manager / builder is also not functional. The state of these two pieces has not been publicly acknowledged and, of course, there's not an estimate of when (or if) they will return.

In the meantime, Blizzard has released Shadowlands on _retail_ and Naxxramas on _classic_ both of which need a "## Interface:" bump at the very least.

I do have a local copy of the SVN repositories for my addons so I'm looking for:

1. A new home for the SVN repositories (and how to upload my local copy).
2. A package manager / builder that will require the minimum amount of changes (i.e. uses .pkgmeta).
3. A How-to or Step-by-Step on how to complete this transition.

The addons I'm most concerned with (Skillet and Skillet-Classic) are both hosted on WowInterface so once I have a new .zip file, I can upload them here. If you can upload a .zip package to CurseForge, I don't know how to do that so some assistance would be appreciated.

I've seen references to https://github.com/BigWigsMods/packager but I'm not sure yet how I would use it.

Don't expect help with that. I've asked a few times and nobody ever really answers, or if they do (there have been a couple of kind souls) they all assume everybody knows what "release.sh" and other components are and how to use them.

I have yet to see a fully written guide for complete noobs, complete with step-by-step pictures and other information, and the thing has been out for four years.

I'd like to write some simple addon/development tutorials. But I already wasted a lot of time on wow that my life is kinda suffering under it

*cough* http://svn.wowinterface.com

Well, yeah. Users donate to devs. But devs don't generally donate to other devs. Why would a dev spend a significant amount of time making something that only helps other devs? Thats just wasted manpower. Devs aren't generaly altruistic.

I finally made a guide for using the BigWigs packager with GitHub
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Using_the_...GitHub_Actions

Merry Christmas

Thank you, Ketho. Merry Christmas to you too. I still don't know how to install the BWP, or even if it is installed. I'm reading your Wiki, and this is still confusing.

You don't need to "install" the bigwigs packager. Send me a message here or on the wowuidev discord and I'll gladly walk you through it

I have been testing some app called WOWUP... seems to work well across multipule wow ui sources.

Thank you, Ketho!

I'm going to give CurseForge / Overwolf a little bit into the new year to get things fixed and if they don't, then I'll move my repositories to GitHub and implement the BWP.

I've had the same experience with WowUp. With the BWP to build my addon releases and WowUp to keep all my addons up-to-date I can reduce my dependence on CurseForge to a bare minimum.

Thank you for all the help, Ketho. I am well on the way to uploading addons again.

I do have a question about the BWP and Wowinterface. Looking at my various projects, the game compatibility sections are all toggled for classic 1.13.6, which is accurate, but the projects that are compatible with both retail and classic do not also have 9.0.2 toggled. Did I miss something in the packager? When looking at their pages, I do see [R] and [C] as download options, so clearly the packager is creating zips for both game versions.

Should I manually edit each project and toggle that compatibility, or leave it alone? I am talking under Manage AddOn, if that wasn't clear.

You should manually add that compatibility tag. I assume because it uploaded the Classic version last and the retail 9.0.2 one got overwritten by that. While because of Curse you'd want to upload the Classic zip last because that would show as the main file download for e.g. MrBigglesworthDeath

I don't know if there is a way to make it set compatibility tags to e.g. the latest retail 9.0.2 and when bigwigs packaging a classic zip that it would not remove the 9.0.2 tag, otherwise we should make a feature request ticket

edit: this should be specific to WoWInterface. I now suddenly realize having both 9.0.2 and 1.13.6 compat tags on CurseForge would break the CF client

Things have gone from bad to worse regarding my SVN repositories on WowAce. I inherited the Skillet project and managed to fumble through creating the Skillet-Classic project but I have no faith in CF's ability to ever get me back to a working package manager (or current SVN contents, but for this part I think I can just upload everything again). Someone suggested I rename the existing project(s) and start over with the project hosted on CurseForge instead and I have started to do that with Skillet. I'm now stuck trying to get a working repository associated with the project.

I have whatever SVN places on my local machine.

I'd be happy if I could just start over with GIT repositories on github populated with the current files but I'm afraid I'm not sure how to do that. Is there anyone that would be willing to give me some one on one time to get me going again?

I can pay it forward for you. Ketho helped me, and I can help you. My projects used to be SVN and I've been moving them all to Git.

Fantastic! Thank you very much! I've sent you a PM.

/me gestures around again

:D

Thanks to everyone in this thread especially myrroddin! I have successfully created new CurseForge projects for Skillet and Skillet-Classic with the repositories on GitHub and packaging via the BigWigsMod packager.

Still a few minor glitches to iron out but I feel confident that this is the correct solution.