Editing WoWBench (section)

:{{icon-exclamation}}'''WoWBench now has *some* continuing support, currently distributed with [[AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft]], including support for Lua 5.1.2 and WoW 4.x. See: ([[AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft history|Change History]])'''  --[[User:Bear|<span style="border-bottom: 1px dotted; cursor: help;" title="Celess is the AddOn Studio 2010 dev coordinator">Bear</span>]] <small>([[User talk:Bear|T]])</small> 18:29, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

:{{icon-exclamation}}'''WoWBench is unfortunately out of date. It's not entirely abandoned...'''   --[[WoWWiki:User:Mikk|<span style="border-bottom: 1px dotted; cursor: help;" title="Mikk is a WoWWiki Admin">Mikk</span>]] <small>([[WoWWiki:User talk:Mikk|T]])</small> 18:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

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'''WoWBench''' aims to be a near-complete "emulation of the [[wo:World of Warcraft API|World of Warcraft API]]". [[wo:AddOn|AddOn]] development in [[WoW]] can be somewhat strained at times due the near-total lack of in-game debugging capabilities. Added to that, the time it takes to test each change is fairly long.

WoWBench enables AddOn developers to test most of their functionality offline, in a controlled environment where they can fire game events at their own leisure, with content that they choose. 

It also features a "built-in commandline debugger" with stack backtraces and capability to look at global as well as local variables at various stack depths, that allows you to run your own Lua code while examining the breakpoint or error. Of course, anyone with a "[[wo:Lua]|] debugger" can utilize those for much more fine-grained debugging while running their AddOn under WoWBench, something which is not possible while running it inside the actual game.

WoWBench does not have an actual graphical user interface (at least, not yet). Game world and (simulated) user interface interaction is all done through console commands. This is not a disadvantage, as it has the distinct advantage of being "[[WoWBench/FAQ#scripting|scriptable]] for easy repetition".

[[Image:wowbench.png|right]]

"WoWBench is implemented wholly in Lua", which allows AddOn programmers to easily extend it, and modify it to suit their own purposes.

<div style="display:table; border: 1px dotted; padding: 1ex 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;">Latest version: [[WoWBench/To do#v1.12.0.a2|WoWBench v1.12.0.a2]], Aug 27 2006. &nbsp; &rarr; [[#Getting set up|[download]]]</div>