Chapter 15 · Share

Contribute to Open Vanilla

Report bugs, fix the manual, and send changes to the project: the branches, the tests to run, and how releases ship.

On this pageWays to help Fix the manual How the code is organised Branches Tests to run How releases ship Rules for contributions

Ways to help #

Report bugs in the Discord's bug-reports forum or as GitHub issues, with your logs (Logs\ in the launcher's data folder).
Make addons and publish them.
Stream and make videos: link your channel.
Host a realm or run a node.
Fix the manual (next).
Send code: see below.

Fix the manual #

This manual is plain text in the repo: one Markdown file per chapter in docs/manual/. To fix or add something:

Edit the chapter's .md file. Sections are ## Heading {#link-id}; keep existing ids so links keep working.
Build it: python tools/build_manual.py --check. It writes the pages to www/manual/ and fails if any link or anchor is broken.
Send it as a pull request, or describe the change in an issue.

An AI agent with the workspace kit can do this for you: "Read CLAUDE.md. In docs/manual/, add a section about <topic> to the right chapter, then run the build with --check."

How the code is organised #

Folder	What's there
`Data/Interface/AddOns/`	The Vanilla Remastered addons
`launcher/`	The Windows launcher
`www/`	The website (and this manual in `www/manual/`)
`realm/`	The realm: server patches, Vanilla Remastered SQL, browser-play pages
`bot/`	Herald, the Discord bot
`tools/`	Art generators, the Workshop tools, the Model Porter, the patch builder
`devkit/`	The Lua sim, SQL tests, dev proxy, Herald Lite
`agent/`	The AI workspace kit
`workshop/`	The Workshop catalogue and collections

Branches #

**main** is where work happens.
**stable** is what's live: the realm, the website and the launcher's updates all follow it. Only releases move it.

Tests to run #

py -3 devkit\check.py                   # repo checks (CI runs --strict)
lua5.1 devkit/sim/run_tests.lua         # addon tests
python devkit/db/test_sql.py --local    # realm database changes
py -3 -m pytest tests                   # launcher, site, bot, tools

When you fix a bug, add a test that would have caught it: addon bugs in devkit/sim/tests/<addon>.lua, server or SQL bugs in devkit/db/test_sql.py or a Herald Lite scenario.

How releases ship #

A release is playtested on staging, gets a ## New in X.Y.Z section in CHANGELOG.md, and is tagged by the maintainer. The build server makes the installer, the zip, their checksums and a signed update manifest; launchers pick it up by themselves.

Rules for contributions #

No Blizzard files, ever: checks refuse MPQs, DBCs and stock interface files.
No secrets in commits: tokens, keys and passwords stay in .env files that git ignores.
Keep it free: nothing that sells power, items or game time.