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<h1 style="margin-bottom:0;padding-bottom:0;">Using Bazel to create Minecraft modpacks</h1>
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<em>An overview of how I automated the build process for CorePack</em>
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<br><br>
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<p><em>All content of this post is based around the work I did <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://github.com/Ewpratten/corepack">here</a></em></p>
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<p>Back in <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Java_Edition_1.2.5">2012</a>, I got in to Minecraft mod development, and soon after, put together an almost-vanilla client-side modpack for myself that mainly contained rendering, UI, and quality-of-life tweaks. While this modpack never got published, or was even given a name, I kept maintaining it for years until I eventually stopped playing Minecraft just before the release of Minecraft <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Java_Edition_1.9"><code>1.9</code></a> (in 2016). I had gotten so used to the features of this modpack, that playing truly vanilla Minecraft didn't feel correct.</p>
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<p>Recently, a few friends invited me to join their private Minecraft server, and despite having not touched the game for around four years, I decided to join. This was a bit of a mistake on their part, as they now get the pleasure of someone who used to main <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Java_Edition_1.6.4"><code>1.6.4</code></a> constantly walking up to things and asking <em>"What is this and how does it work?"</em>. I have started to get used to the very weird new collection of blocks, completely reworked command system, over-complicated combat system, and a new rendering system that makes everything "look wrong".</p>
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<p>One major thing was still missing though, <em>where was my modpack?</em> I set out to rebuild my good old modpack (and finally give it a name, <em>CorePack</em>). Not much has changed, most of the same rendering and UI mods are back, along with the same <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL_Shading_Language">GLSL</a> shaders, and similar textures. Although, I did decide to take a <em>"major step"</em> and switch from the <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="http://files.minecraftforge.net/">Forge Mod Loader</a> to the <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://fabricmc.net/">Fabric Loader</a>, since I prefer Fabric's API. </p>
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<h2 id="curseforge-bazel">Curseforge & Bazel</h2>
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<p>I don't remember <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://curseforge.com/">Curseforge</a> existing back when I used to play regularly. It is a huge improvement over the <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.planetminecraft.com/">PlanetMinecraft</a> forums, as curse provides a clean way to access data about published Minecraft mods, and even has an API! Luckily, since I switched the modpack to Fabric, every mod I was looking for was available through curse (although, it seems <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/notenoughitems">NEI</a> is a thing of the past).</p>
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<p>My main goal for the updated version of CorePack was to design it in such a way I could make a CI pipeline generate new releases for me when mods are updated. This requires programmatically pulling information about mods, and their JAR files using a buildsystem script. Since this project involves working with a large amount of data from various external sources, I once-again chose to use <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://bazel.build">Bazel</a>, a buildsystem that excels at these kinds of projects.</p>
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<p>While Curseforge provides a very easy to use API for working with mod data, @Wyn-Price (a fellow mod developer) has put together an amazing project called <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.cursemaven.com/">Curse Maven</a> that I decided to use instead. Curse Maven is a serverless API that acts much like my <a href="/blog/2020/09/17/ultralight-writeup">Ultralight project</a>. Any request for an artifact to Curse Maven will be redirected, and served from the <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://authors.curseforge.com/knowledge-base/projects/529-api#Maven">Curseforge Maven server</a> without the need for me to figure out the long-form artifact identifiers used internally by curse.</p>
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<p>Curse Maven makes loading a mod (in this case, <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/fabric-api"><code>fabric-api</code></a>) into Bazel as easy as:</p>
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<pre data-lang="python" style="background-color:#2b303b;color:#c0c5ce;" class="language-python "><code class="language-python" data-lang="python"><span style="color:#65737e;"># WORKSPACE
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</span><span style="color:#65737e;"># Load bazel_maven_repository
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</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">http_archive</span><span>(
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">name </span><span>= "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">maven_repository_rules</span><span>",
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">strip_prefix </span><span>= "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">bazel_maven_repository-1.2.0</span><span>",
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">type </span><span>= "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">zip</span><span>",
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">urls </span><span>= ["</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">https://github.com/square/bazel_maven_repository/archive/1.2.0.zip</span><span>"],
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</span><span>)
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</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">load</span><span>("</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">@maven_repository_rules//maven:maven.bzl</span><span>", "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">maven_repository_specification</span><span>")
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</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">load</span><span>("</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">@maven_repository_rules//maven:jetifier.bzl</span><span>", "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">jetifier_init</span><span>")
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</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">jetifier_init</span><span>()
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</span><span>
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</span><span style="color:#65737e;"># Declare any mods as maven artifacts
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</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">maven_repository_specification</span><span>(
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">name </span><span>= "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">maven</span><span>",
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">artifacts </span><span>= {
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">curse.maven:fabric-api:3049174</span><span>": {"</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">insecure</span><span>": </span><span style="color:#d08770;">True</span><span>}
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</span><span> },
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">repository_urls </span><span>= [
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">https://www.cursemaven.com</span><span>",
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</span><span> ],
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</span><span>)
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</span></code></pre>
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<p>The above snippet uses a Bazel ruleset developed by <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://squareup.com/ca/en">Square, Inc.</a> called <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://github.com/square/bazel_maven_repository"><code>bazel_maven_repository</code></a>. </p>
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<h2 id="modpack-configuration">Modpack configuration</h2>
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<p>Since my pack is designed for use with <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://multimc.org/">MultiMC</a>, two sets of configuration files are needed. The first set tells MultiMC which versions of <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://www.lwjgl.org/">LWJGL</a>, Minecraft, and Fabric to use, and the second set are the in-game config files. Many of these files contain information that I would like to modify from Bazel during the modpack build step. Luckily, the <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/skylark/language.html">Starlark</a> core library comes with an action called <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://docs.bazel.build/versions/2.0.0/skylark/lib/actions.html#expand_template"><code>expand_template</code></a>. <code>expand_template</code> is basically a find-and-replace tool that will perform substitutions on files. Since this is an action, and not a rule, it must be wrapped with a small rule declaration:</p>
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<pre data-lang="python" style="background-color:#2b303b;color:#c0c5ce;" class="language-python "><code class="language-python" data-lang="python"><span style="color:#65737e;"># tools/template.bzl
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</span><span style="color:#b48ead;">def </span><span style="color:#8fa1b3;">expand_template_impl</span><span>(</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">ctx</span><span>):
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</span><span> ctx.actions.</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">expand_template</span><span>(
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">template </span><span>= ctx.file.template,
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">output </span><span>= ctx.outputs.out,
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">substitutions </span><span>= {
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</span><span> k: ctx.</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">expand_location</span><span>(v, ctx.attr.data)
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#b48ead;">for </span><span>k, v </span><span style="color:#b48ead;">in </span><span>ctx.attr.substitutions.</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">items</span><span>()
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</span><span> },
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">is_executable </span><span>= ctx.attr.is_executable,
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</span><span> )
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</span><span>
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</span><span>expand_template = </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">rule</span><span>(
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">implementation </span><span>= expand_template_impl,
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">attrs </span><span>= {
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">template</span><span>": attr.</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">label</span><span>(</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">mandatory </span><span>= </span><span style="color:#d08770;">True</span><span>, </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">allow_single_file </span><span>= </span><span style="color:#d08770;">True</span><span>),
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">substitutions</span><span>": attr.</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">string_dict</span><span>(</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">mandatory </span><span>= </span><span style="color:#d08770;">True</span><span>),
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">out</span><span>": attr.</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">output</span><span>(</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">mandatory </span><span>= </span><span style="color:#d08770;">True</span><span>),
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">is_executable</span><span>": attr.</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">bool</span><span>(</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">default </span><span>= </span><span style="color:#d08770;">False</span><span>, </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">mandatory </span><span>= </span><span style="color:#d08770;">False</span><span>),
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">data</span><span>": attr.</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">label_list</span><span>(</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">allow_files </span><span>= </span><span style="color:#d08770;">True</span><span>),
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</span><span> },
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</span><span>)
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</span></code></pre>
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<p>In a <code>BUILD</code> file, template rules can be defined as follows:</p>
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<pre data-lang="python" style="background-color:#2b303b;color:#c0c5ce;" class="language-python "><code class="language-python" data-lang="python"><span style="color:#65737e;"># BUILD
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</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">load</span><span>("</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">//tools:template.bzl</span><span>", "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">expand_template</span><span>")
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</span><span>
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</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">expand_template</span><span>(
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">name </span><span>= "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">my_config</span><span>",
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">template </span><span>= "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">config.json.in</span><span>",
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">out </span><span>= "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">config.json</span><span>",
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</span><span> </span><span style="color:#bf616a;">substitutions </span><span>= {
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">TEST_SUBS</span><span>": "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">hello world</span><span>"
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</span><span> }
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</span><span>)
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</span></code></pre>
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<p>Using the following example file as <code>config.json.in</code>, this rule would have the following effect:</p>
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<pre data-lang="js" style="background-color:#2b303b;color:#c0c5ce;" class="language-js "><code class="language-js" data-lang="js"><span style="color:#65737e;">// config.json.in
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</span><span>{
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">key</span><span>": "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">TEST_SUBS</span><span>"
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</span><span>}
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</span><span>
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</span><span style="color:#65737e;">// config.json
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</span><span>{
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</span><span> "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">key</span><span>": "</span><span style="color:#a3be8c;">hello world</span><span>"
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</span><span>}
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</span></code></pre>
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<h2 id="packaging">Packaging</h2>
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<p>Once mods are loaded, and configuration files are defined in the buildsystem, I use a large number of <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/be/general.html#filegroup"><code>filegroup</code></a> and <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/be/general.html#genrule"><code>genrule</code></a> rules to set up a directory hierarchy in the workspace, and wrap everything in a call to <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/v2ray/ext/-/blob/bazel/zip.bzl#L23:25"><code>zipper</code></a> to package the modpack into a ZIP file.</p>
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<p>Finally, I use <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://github.com/features/actions">GitHub Actions</a> to automatically run the buildscript, and publish the resulting MultiMC instance zip to the <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://github.com/Ewpratten/corepack">GitHub repo</a> for this project.</p>
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