Roadmap

Status: done (2026-10-11).

Status: done (2026-10-11).

Notes on the delivered state:

• .wowlua files are compiled with type-only syntax erased (decision T64); other wowlua syntax reports the milestone that implements it.
• The corpus (28 pinned addon releases and the Lua 5.1 test suite, 7,179 files, 4.8 million lines) parses with the same accept/reject result as Lua 5.1, and every file round-trips to identical bytecode in all line modes; in preserve mode even the line info is identical. The formatter formats every corpus file idempotently without changing its meaning.
• Fuzzing is done with deterministic randomized tests on stable Rust (decision T67). wowlua check --watch follows with incremental checking (M4).

Status: done (2026-10-11).

Notes on the delivered state:

• Lowering is checked by differential tests that run compiled .wowlua and hand-written Lua in the embedded VM; multi-module and split-flavor packages are built and run per flavor in the CLI tests.
• cargo xtask corpus addons adopts every corpus addon with wowlua init and builds it: all 108 keep their TOC order. The usage analysis over-approximates without types; where it contradicts the listed order the listed order wins with W1035 (decision T70).
• Classes, enums and decorators other than @if report M3.

Status: done (2026-10-11).

Notes on the delivered state:

• The sample addon is examples/widget-demo (decision T80); CI builds it and runs it against a mock frame API. It was checked in game on the WoW: Forever beta client (1.60.1).
• Class, enum and decorator checks that need only declarations are reported now (decision T75); type-based ones come with M4.
• Native widget types are declared by the compiler until M4 (decision T77).
• No public standard-library modules yet: the infrastructure is checked with test modules through WOWLUA_STDLIB_DIR (decision T79).

Status: done (2026-10-12).

Notes on the delivered state:

• The corpus (108 addons, plain Lua checked with check.lua) checks with zero errors; applying all lint fixes to it keeps every addon building. examples/widget-demo and examples/typed-demo check in strict mode without diagnostics, and CI runs both.
• The wow-api declarations are embedded in the compiler (crate wowlua-api) and regenerated with cargo xtask types fetch and cargo xtask types gen (decisions T83–T85). The wow-api-<flavor> types packages and wowlua types sync arrive with the package manager.
• Leniency rules that keep valid Lua free of errors are decision T87; feature detection (existence tests) works in every build mode (T89).

Status: done (2026-10-12).

Notes on the delivered state:

• Checked in game on the WoW: Forever client with examples/typed-demo and examples/widget-demo: the dev window's profiler, monitor (events, scripts, timers), log and errors tabs, and /tdemo check, whose runtime check catches a nil from UnitName.
• Dev builds have every tool built in without code changes (decision T96): every function is profiled, plain .lua files included (T97), handlers are monitored, errors are captured, and /wl opens the dev window, drawn in the SuuUI design with its fonts shipped (T101–T103). The corpus builds this way with zero failures.
• wowlua trace maps locations of line-preserved builds; decoding bundled builds through source maps arrives with bundling (M7).

Status: done (2026-10-12).

Notes on the delivered state:

• Sources: git (bare clones, exported per commit), SVN (system svn, pinned to a revision), path and archive (https, file://); the registry waits for its server (T104), and the wow-api types stay embedded.
• The exit check (packager-compat workflow, T119): thirty-six addons built with the BigWigs packager, at pinned commits, packaged by the packager the way their CI does (multi-version, -S, or game by game with -g/-m) and built by wowlua after init --from-pkgmeta, load identical code in every flavor and client locale and ship the same files (the same bytes outside src/, with the packager's line endings and TOC versions): Bartender4, BigWigs (12 AddOns), LittleWigs (12), WeakAuras (5), DBM (8, with its voice pack as an external addon), Details (8), ElvUI (3), Inventorian (2), Plater, Masque, Mapster, Quartz, BugSack, SimulationCraft, AdvancedInterfaceOptions, GatherMate2 (4), ShadowedUnitFrames (2), AtlasLootClassic (8), RCLootCouncil2, omnibar, Capping (2), BigWigs_Voice, BigWigs_Classic, SexyMap, MythicDungeonTools (2), TellMeWhen (2), AllTheThings, Dominos (6), OmniCC (2), Cell, TotalRP3 (2), BlizzMove (2), QuickQuest, BigWigs_WrathOfTheLichKing, Tukui and KuiNameplates (4). Rarity and hekili are left out: the packager itself cannot fetch their LibCompress SVN external. The corpus still adopts and builds all its addons.
• wowlua library packages compile into the addon (tree-shaken modules, their own check settings and meta, T110–T112); workspaces share one lock and dist/, with generated declaration files of @global APIs (T113, T114).

• Done 2026-10-13 with SuuUI, a WoW Forever addon adopted with wowlua init: one tag push (v0.2.0-beta.2) made CI publish to CurseForge and Wago (the readable build, as betas) and to GitHub Releases (the fully optimized build, with source maps and release.json). WoWInterface takes no WoW Forever addons yet; its upload is covered by the publish tests against a mock site.

• Optimization was checked in game on the WoW: Forever client (2026-10-13): Bartender4 adopted with wowlua init and built bundled (strip, release optimizations) loads from 2 bundles and its template XML, with no Lua errors; so does the build at max with minify-libraries (Ace3 and the other libraries renamed, compacted and optimized too: 774 KiB of Lua instead of 1.29 MB, compiled in a third of the time). The corpus checks every minification pass on 7179 files and builds its 108 addons bundled at every level.

Status: done (2026-10-15). The stages follow the bullets above: S1 the core set, S2 locale to movable frames, S3 the helpers, registries, jobs, dialogs, menus and lists, then the widget themes, and S4 the patterns found across the corpus. Every module ran in game on WoW: Forever (StdTest: 109 tests, automatic and guided, all passing). Released as 0.9.0.

• S1 done 2026-10-14: errors, events, lifecycle, timer, combat, hooks, slash, saved and callbacks (with log, debug and reflect from M5), written in wowlua and type-checked, so their exports are typed for importers. Their compile-time checks are E8001–E8003, E8010, E8020, E8021, E8030, E8100–E8104, E8112, E8117, W8011, W8040, W8101 and W8102. Tests run every addon in dev, release and fully minified builds against a mock client; the in-game suite (tests/ingame, /stdtest) passed on the WoW: Forever client, including combat lockdown and a /reload with real SavedVariables, and runs against the mock in CI. examples/core-demo uses every core module.
• Completed 2026-10-14: handlers are typed by their event or message (on, once, onUnit, send, @event, @unitEvent), hook targets are checked (W8040, and W8102 for globals of Blizzard's load-on-demand addons, marked @onDemand in the wow-api declarations), events missing from a shared-mode flavor warn (W8101; the declarations now list each flavor's own events, from client dumps), and Secret<…> in saved.bind defaults is E8104.
• S2 done 2026-10-14: locale done 2026-10-14 (JSON locales checked against the base locale and compiled into guarded Lua files that load first, with [AllowLoadTextLocale] tags; L typed by the base locale); pool done 2026-10-14 (frame and table pools; FramePool.new typed by the pooled class's constructor; protected frames released after combat); settings done 2026-10-14 (Settings API pages bound to saved stores, every control kind, keys and types checked E8113/E8070/E8107/E8114, profile refresh, combat-deferred open; saved.bind now returns its defaults' type).
• launcher done 2026-10-14 (Addon Compartment entry, minimap button through LibDBIcon or a built-in shape-aware draggable one, LDB launcher, position in LibDBIcon's shape, E8080). Its theme waits for the widget themes.
• serialize done 2026-10-14 (binary encoding with limits, DEFLATE in plain Lua checked against zlib both ways, printable and addon-channel encodings, checksummed export strings); comm done 2026-10-14 (chunked messages in wire format 1 or AceComm's, ChatThrottleLib or a built-in throttle, server-throttle backoff, messaging lockdown, objects, E8050).
• Dogfooding 2026-10-14: the test scripts and the mock client are compiled as wowlua (type errors fail the tests), and the runtime is written in wowlua and compiled into the embedded Lua by cargo xtask runtime. New: wowlua compile (files to Lua without an AddOn folder, with imports and bundling). Found on the way: C_Timer.NewTimer/NewTicker returned their callback type (now TimerHandle/TickerHandle), error handlers took no extra arguments, and the dev window created an unused frame.
• Typing everything (2026-10-14): the standard library, the runtime and the in-game suite are checked in strict mode, with any left only for values that are dynamic by nature. callbacks.Registry<E> is typed as specified (E8420; it returned any). The checker gained what this needed: field narrowing (locals and globals), discriminated unions on x.kind ==, assert results, narrowing in closures for locals never reassigned, interface methods written as function fields or function t.m(_, …), method calls on narrowed optional fields, contextual typing of generic call arguments, # on possibly-nil values (E2005), and a setfenv that only disables global checks when it targets the file's own code. Stdlib option types use x?: T for omittable fields. Then: Blizzard's Settings API, the chat frames, WorldFrame and LibStub's LibDataBroker/LibDBIcon are declared; the stdlib's stateful objects are classes (the minimap button a widget class); intrinsic-only declarations no longer hide the modules' types from callers (events.on returned any), and the API generator no longer aliases the compiler's types to any (TimerHandle was any).
• Idiomatic wowlua (2026-10-14): the stdlib, the runtime, the mock client and the in-game suite use enums (comm.Distribution, log.Level, members or their strings accepted), classes and static fields where state lives, const, ?., ??, compound assignment and continue. The checker gained short-circuiting optional chains and ?? as an existence probe; inlined constant strings escape bytes outside UTF-8. The conformance corpus runs in parallel within a memory budget (nightly 40 → 24 minutes).
• bindings done 2026-10-14: @binding and header collected at compile time (constants, E8350–E8352), one generated Bindings.xml for every flavor calling the addon's dispatch table, BINDING_* labels at load time, settings.keybinding checked (E8353, also against a hand-written Bindings.xml), E4334, and default keys behind the binding-defaults client feature (W8354; decisions S19–S21). The mock client loads the generated file; on the WoW: Forever client the generated bindings are listed with their labels and shown in the settings page's keybinding row; a guided step presses a key bound to one (RunBinding is Blizzard-only there); all 66 in-game tests passed.
• tooltip done 2026-10-14: @onTooltip and hook with a TooltipHook class (enable/disable), TooltipDataProcessor post-calls where the client has the tooltip data system, OnTooltipSet* script hooks on the standard tooltips (and attached ones) elsewhere, normalized TooltipData, kinds checked per flavor from the API declarations (E8330, E8300; decision S22). The mock client shows tooltips both ways (Mock.showTooltip); the in-game suite fills GameTooltip and waits for a real mouseover. The checker now treats optional links as existence tests for load order. All 69 in-game tests passed.
• frames done 2026-10-14: frames.movable with drag (button, modifier), a resize grip or your own, Ctrl + wheel scale, clamping, lock, reset, restore and save; positions anchored at the frame's screen third (decisions S23–S25); restored once the store loads and on profile changes; protected frames wait for the end of combat; the store field checked (E8340). The mock client has frame geometry (Mock.drag, Mock.sizeBy, Mock.wheel). Found on the way: an imported type alias used in an interface or alias of another module resolved to any when that module's declarations came later; aliases now resolve where they are first used. S2 is complete.
• S3 in progress: color done 2026-10-14 (hex colors folded at compile time, E8390; class colors honoring CUSTOM_CLASS_COLORS; escapes; a secret string stays a string through wrap); secret done 2026-10-14 (decision S26, from SuuUI's probes of the WoW: Forever client); the generated API declarations now let documented secret-accepting arguments (SecretArguments) take Secret<T>, widget setters included. unit done 2026-10-14 (records with secrets passed through, WoW: Forever's first-and-surname names, the client's health percentage, group tokens; the mock client models units); aura done 2026-10-14 (guarded reads with readable, the engine's aura containers with filter groups, spell and dispel-type lists and the client's buff look, filter words per flavor E8310, containers E8300; decisions S27, S28; the mock client has auras and containers); spell done 2026-10-14 (cooldowns with secret times but a readable onCooldown, duration objects, the legacy cooldown API as fallback); item done 2026-10-14 (shared requests, timeouts, cancelling, an LRU cache, spell data; await comes with jobs; the record is ItemData, as the API's ItemInfo names the item reference). The checker now narrows an optional chain's base where the chain has a value (if x?.f ~= nil then x.f … end). media done 2026-10-14 (own registry, LibSharedMedia when any addon loads it, waiting registrations handed over, E8400; LibSharedMedia is declared for LibStub). The checker types table literals assigned to t[i] by the element type. jobs done 2026-10-14 (coroutines within a per-frame budget, weighted priorities, sleep, waiting for events, progress, combat pauses, W8430), with item.await; the mock client drives frames (Mock.advanceFrames, Mock.spend). dialog done 2026-10-15 (confirm, prompt, export, import on the addon's own frames in the client's popup look, Escape, one at a time; decision S29), with WidgetTheme and the theme-aware builders in wowlua:frames. Decision S30: menu and list wrap MenuUtil and ScrollBox, which every flavor has. menu done 2026-10-15 (a chainable MenuBuilder over MenuUtil: titles, buttons, checkboxes, radios, submenus, dividers, disabled entries). list done 2026-10-15 (ScrollBox holders showing pooled rows of a widget class, selection, refresh, scrolling; the mock client has a ScrollBox). Widget themes done 2026-10-15 for dialogs and the launcher's built-in minimap button (decision S31). S3 is complete; its in-game run is pending (the WoW: Forever beta was down), StdTest has suites for every module.
• Exit criterion 2026-10-15: examples/core-demo uses events, saved variables, a settings page, a minimap button, keybindings and addon messages from the standard library alone; a test runs it in the mock client (login, settings page, minimap button and compartment entry, a key press, a ping answered over addon messages).
• S4 complete 2026-10-15 (patterns found across the corpus): table and format (decision S32), version (S33), alert, links, unit.roster, events.bucket and launcher.dataSource (S34), secure (S35), and Edit Mode on frames.movable (S36). Not yet run in game (the WoW: Forever beta was down); StdTest has suites and guided steps for all of them.