Strongbox, a World of Warcraft addon manager

Strongbox is an open source, advertisement free and privacy respecting addon manager for World of Warcraft.

It runs on Linux and macOS.

It supports addons hosted by ~Curseforge,~ wowinterface.com, ~Tukui~, Github and Gitlab.

---

Notice: Strongbox has been rewritten for release 8.0.0

The brave can find alpha releases here: https://github.com/ogri-la/strongbox8

Feel free to leave any feedback for 8 in that repository. I love hearing from users.

Strongbox 7.x will continue to receive security and bug fixes until Strongbox 9 is released.

---

Notice: The minimum required version of the JDK has been raised from 11 to 17 as of release 7.6.0

This only affects those using the .jar file (Mac, ARM, and Flatback users).

AppImage users should not be affected. Flatpak users should see their dependencies updated automatically.

This change is to accommodate bug fixes in JavaFX.

JavaFX as of version 20 requires JDK 17.

OpenJDK 11, depending on your distribution, is probably EOL too.

---

Notice: tukui.org no longer hosts addons except elvui and tukui as of 2023-06-01.

Unfortunately the location of these two addons has changed as well as details around their access.

I've dropped support for tukui.org in 7.0.0 and instead mirror tukui and elvui releases on Github. This automatically includes them in the Github catalogue.

---

Notice: Curseforge addons no longer receive updates as of version 5.0.0, released Feb 1st, 2022.

Use the "Source" and "Find similar" actions from the addon context menu (added 4.9.0) to help migrate addons away from Curseforge.

I also maintain a list of other addon managers.

---

Installation

AppImage

Strongbox is available as a standalone AppImage binary from the releases page.

chmod +x strongbox-x.x.x-x86_64.AppImage
./strongbox-x.x.x-x86_64.AppImage

Arch Linux and the AUR

Arch Linux users can install Strongbox from the AUR (mirror).

Flatpak and Flathub

Flatpak users can install Strongbox from Flathub.

flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak --user install la.ogri.strongbox

Caveats when using Flatpaks:

• Strongbox application config and data lives at ~/.var/app/la.ogri.strongbox on the host and not ~/.local/share or ~/.config.
• Possible font problems around using incorrect fonts and aliasing.

Java

Java users can run Strongbox using the .jar from the releases page.

java -jar strongbox-x.x.x-standalone.jar

Usage

Strongbox works by matching installed addons to a catalogue of addons available online.

Some addons are matched directly to the catalogue but others may require you to search the catalogue and re-install them before that match can be made.

Some addons bundle other addons that do not appear in the catalogue. You will need to re-install the 'parent' addon that bundled those addons.

First time usage:

1. Select File -> New addon directory and select your "Addons" directory (/path/to/WoW/_retail_/Interface/Addons)
2. Select Addons -> Re-install all to re-install all matching addons
   • warning! this may downgrade the version from what is installed to what is available. If unsure, re-install addons individually using the context menu.

Afterwards, use the Update all button to update all addons with new versions available.

Features

• classic and retail addon support
• install addons from URL
• catalogue search
• bulk update
• install addons from multiple sources:
  • ~Curseforge~
  • wowinterface.com
  • ~Tukui~
  • Github (using releases)
  • Gitlab (using releases)
• import and export lists of addons
• safeguards against bad addons
• warnings when addons install other bundled addons
• ignore addons to prevent accidental changes
• mutual dependency tracking
• installing a previous release of an addon
• pinning an addon to a specific release
• multi-toc support
• release.json support
• source swapping

Recognition

Under no circumstances whatsoever does this software:

• deal with advertising or advertisers
• collect, monitor or report upon your usage of Strongbox or your data
• solicit, beg or manipulate for donations
• attempt to monitise you, the user, in any way

This software also tries very hard to not cause a bother - for you or the addon host.

I benefit so much from the hard work of those who write Free and Open Source software, including addon developers, that it's my privilege to offer this small piece back.

Special thanks to:

• bug reporters, feature requesters and those with constructive feedback
  • if you guys hadn't reported it, I wouldn't have known to fix it.
• layday of instawow
• vlaaad of cljfx

Privacy

This software interacts with the following remote hosts:

• wowinterface.com
• api.github.com
  • to download repository and release data for addons hosted on Github
  • to download the latest Strongbox release information
• gitlab.com
• github.com/ogri-la/strongbox-catalogue, to download addon catalogues

These hosts may redirect requests to other hosts.

These interactions use a HTTP user-agent header specific to Strongbox so that it may be identified easily:

"strongbox/x.x (https://github.com/ogri-la/strongbox)"

Running Strongbox with --debug will generate a file called debug.log that I may ask you to upload if you report a bug. Some of the details it contains are:

• addons detected in the currently selected addon directory
• paths to Strongbox configuration and data:
  • /home/torkus/.local/share/strongbox
  • /home/torkus/.config/strongbox
• details about your OS and the version of Java in use:
  • strongbox.version=4.0.0
  • os.name=Linux
  • os.version=5.10.11-arch1-1
  • os.arch=amd64
  • java.runtime.name=OpenJDK Runtime Environment
  • java.vm.name=OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM
  • java.version=11.0.10
  • java.runtime.version=11.0.10+9
  • java.vendor.url=https://openjdk.java.net/
  • java.version.date=2021-01-19
  • java.awt.graphicsenv=sun.awt.X11GraphicsEnvironment
  • javafx.version=14
  • javafx.runtime.version=14+9

Features in detail

classic and retail addon support

"Classic", "Classic (The Burning Crusade)", "Classic (Wrath of the Lich King)", etc and "Retail" versions of WoW are all distinct addon systems.

Some addon authors support all systems in a single download, some support classic as an alternate build of the same addon, some addons support classic only, some addons have been split up into separate addons. There is a lot of variation.

Click the drop-down next to your addon directory and select either retail, classic or classic (TBC).

This will restrict the types of addons that can be installed in the current addon directory.

The Strict ch