packwiz

A command line tool for creating minecraft modpacks. Join my Discord server if you need help here!

Features

Git-friendly TOML-based metadata format
MultiMC pack installer/updater, with support for optional mods and fast automatic updates - perfect for servers!
Pack distribution with HTTP servers, with a built in local server for testing
Easy installation and updating of multiple mods at once from CurseForge and Modrinth
Exporting and importing to/from CurseForge packs
Server-only and Client-only mod handling
Creation of remote file metadata from JAR files for CurseForge mods

Installation

Prebuilt binaries are available from Github Actions - the UI is a bit terrible, but essentially select the top build, then download the artifact zip for your system at the bottom of the page. To run the executable, add the folder where you downloaded it to your PATH environment variable (see tutorial for Windows here) or move it to where you want to use it.

In future I will have a lot more installation options, but you can also compile from source:

Install Go (1.13 or newer) from https://golang.org/dl/
Clone or download the repository (git clone https://github.com/comp500/packwiz), and open the folder in a terminal
Run go install . to put it on your PATH, or go build to just make a binary. Be patient, it has to download and compile dependencies as well!

Getting Started

Run packwiz init to create a modpack in the current folder
Run packwiz curseforge import [zip path] to import from a CurseForge modpack
Run packwiz refresh to update the index of mods
Run packwiz curseforge install [mod] to install a mod from CurseForge
Run packwiz modrinth install [mod] to install a mod from Modrinth
Run packwiz update [mod] to update a mod
Run packwiz update --all to update all the mods in the modpack
Run packwiz curseforge export to export the modpack in the format supported by the CurseForge Launcher
Run packwiz serve to start a local HTTP server running the pack - which packwiz-installer can install from
Run packwiz curseforge detect to detect files that are available on CurseForge and make them downloaded from there
Use the --help flag for more information about any command

packwiz-installer for pack installation

packwiz-installer is a Java-based installer that allows for automatic installation and updates of packwiz packs! It can be used with MultiMC as a prelaunch task, or on servers as part of your start script, and supports side-only mods as well as optional mods with a fancy GUI.

To distribute a packwiz modpack, you'll first want to set up a web hosting service (such as Netlify, Github Pages, GitLab Pages) so that your pack files are accessible from a HTTP/HTTPS link.

Then to distribute the modpack as a MultiMC instance, do the following:

Create a barebones MultiMC instance, with the modloader and Minecraft version you want (memory allocation overrides are also a good idea)
Download packwiz-installer-bootstrap from https://github.com/comp500/packwiz-installer-bootstrap/releases and place it in the instance Minecraft folder
- This is the same folder as options.txt - MultiMC will call it .minecraft or minecraft depending on your system
Go to Edit Instance -> Settings -> Custom commands, then check the Custom Commands box and paste the following command into the pre-launch command field:
- "$INST_JAVA" -jar packwiz-installer-bootstrap.jar https://[your-server]/pack.toml
- (where https://[your-server]/pack.toml is the HTTP URL your pack.toml file is hosted at)
Use the Export Instance function to export your pack as a .zip file
To install your pack, users just need to add it with Add instance -> Import from zip - then packwiz-installer does the rest, keeping it up to date every time the game is launched!

For use on servers, add the -g flag to disable the GUI and -s server to download only server-side mods.

Usage with Git

On Windows, line ending conversion causes the hashes to change when files are uploaded to Git, so you'll get a ton of errors when trying to install the pack
- You'll want to add a .gitattributes file in the root folder with the content * -text - this disables line ending conversion
- If you have existing files committed to Git, you'll need to run git rm --cached -r . then git add . to re-add them after adding .gitattributes
You'll also want a .packwizignore file containing .git/** and .gitattributes (same format as .gitignore) so that Git metadata isn't included in the pack index

Resources

See https://suspicious-joliot-f51f5c.netlify.app/index.html for some documentation
- I am in the process of rewriting the format, so there may be information there that is outdated
See https://github.com/Fibercraft/Temporary-Modpack for an example of an existing modpack using packwiz
- This repository can be published to a service like Github Pages or Netlify and installed using packwiz-installer
- This repository also shows the use of .gitattributes and .packwizignore to disable line ending modification (so that the hashes are correct) and ignore git-specific files
https://modfest.net/fallfest/1.16/server/ is also a good example of a MultiMC instance that uses packwiz-installer

Tips

There are some useful aliases, like packwiz cf => packwiz curseforge and packwiz mr => packwiz modrinth
The packwiz cf install command supports multiple formats:
- packwiz cf install sodium (by slug)
- packwiz cf install https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/sodium (by mod page URL)
- packwiz cf install https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/sodium/files/3067101 (by file page URL)
- packwiz cf install Sodium (by search)
- packwiz cf install --addon-id 394468 --file-id 3067101 (if all else fails)
If files aren't being found, try running the packwiz refresh command to update the index!

Options

Additional options can be configured in the [options] section of pack.toml, as follows:
- mods-folder The folder to save mod metadata files into, for the install commands
- acceptable-game-versions A list of additional Minecraft versions to accept when installing or updating mods
- no-internal-hashes If this is set to true, packwiz will not generate hashes of local files, to prevent merge conflicts and inconsistent hashes when using git/etc.
  - packwiz refresh --build can be used in this mode to generate internal hashes for distributing the pack with packwiz-installer

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