Aurora

Aurora is a Blizzard UI skinning addon. It gives the default interface panels and frames one clean, consistent look.

It runs on its own, or embedded inside another addon. RealUI embeds it through RealUI_Skins.

Supported Clients

One package and one TOC, Aurora.toc, cover five clients. Each client loads only its own skin manifest, chosen line by line with a load directive:

Client	Interface	Load directive	Skin manifest
Retail (Midnight 12.1.x)	120100	[AllowLoadGameType standard]	AddOns_Mainline.xml
WoW Forever (1.60.x beta)	16001	[AllowLoadGameType camelot]	AddOns_Forever.xml
Mists of Pandaria Classic	50504	[AllowLoadGameType mists]	AddOns_Mists.xml
Burning Crusade Classic	20506	[AllowLoadGameType tbc]	AddOns_TBC.xml
Classic Era (1.15.x)	11509	[AllowLoadGameType vanilla]	AddOns_Vanilla.xml

Retail is the main development target.

WoW Forever is built on the Mainline UI with a Camelot game overlay, so Aurora treats it as a Mainline-family flavor, not as a classic port. The other clients don't know the camelot token, and a client treats an unknown token as a match. The Forever line therefore also carries [ExcludeLoadGameType standard, classic]. Skins that only Camelot needs live in Blizzard_X\Camelot\, beside Mainline\.

Don't add a suffixed TOC (Aurora_Mainline.toc and so on) back. On its own client, a suffixed TOC takes priority over Aurora.toc. The same applies when upgrading from 12.1.0.10 or older: delete the Aurora folder first rather than unzipping over it, or the old Aurora_*.toc files stay behind and keep loading.

Quick Start

• Type /aurora to open the options panel.
• Type /aurora help to list every command.
• Type /aurora status to check configuration, compatibility and integration health.

Options

The options panel is under Settings → AddOns → Aurora. It has four sections:

• Features: turn skinning on or off for bags, banks, chat, loot, tooltips, the character sheet, the objective tracker, the main menu bar and fonts. Turn a component off if another addon handles it. Aurora warns about known clashes, for example with Bagnon, AdiBags, ArkInventory, TipTac and Prat. These changes need /reload.

• Appearance:

  • button gradients
  • backdrop opacity
  • a custom highlight color
  • the talent art background and the hero talent anchor presets
  • the Color Mode preset, one of Normal, HDR, Deuteranopia, Protanopia or Tritanopia

  Color Mode changes apply live.

• Privacy & Analytics: turn WagoAnalytics reporting on or off. Aurora sends analytics only while this is on.

• Performance: choose the Lua garbage collection mode:

  • Smooth (the default) runs frequent small collection passes.
  • Default uses standard Lua behaviour.
  • Combat Pause stops collection during combat.

  The change applies at once. A host addon can call Aurora.ApplyGCMode / Aurora.GetGCMode to change the mode itself.

Settings are saved in AuroraConfig. Values are validated on load, and old keys are migrated to their current names.

Slash Commands

• /aurora - open the options panel.
• /aurora help - list the commands.
• /aurora status - show configuration, compatibility, analytics and integration status.
• /aurora debug - show the debug log (needs LibTextDump).
• /aurora skinaudit - list the skins that failed to apply this session, with the client build and interface version.
• /aurora reset - reset the configuration to defaults (then /reload).
• /aurora insertframe - dev A/B toggle; see Developer Notes.
• /aurora mawbuffs - dev A/B toggle; see Developer Notes.

The options panel and slash commands live in gui.lua. An embedding host usually includes only Skin\skin.xml and a flavor manifest, so /aurora does not exist there and the host supplies its own options UI. Under RealUI, RealUI_Skins stores AuroraConfig per profile and mirrors the dev toggles as /auroraInsertFrame and /auroraMawBuffs.

Layout

• Skin/: the engine and its public API (Aurora.Base, Aurora.Skin, Aurora.Hook, Aurora.Color, Aurora.Theme, Aurora.Util). Skin/init.lua sets the flavor flags (private.isRetail, isForever, isMists, isBCC, isVanilla, …).
• Skin/Interface/AddOns/: one folder per Blizzard addon, holding the per-flavor skins (Mainline\, Camelot\, Classic\, TBC\, Mists\, Vanilla\), and the generated AddOns_<Flavor>.xml manifests.
• Skin/shared/: skin bodies shared across flavors. Each flavor calls them through a thin wrapper.
• config.lua, compatibility.lua, analytics.lua, integration.lua, aurora.lua, gui.lua: configuration, conflict detection, analytics consent, error handling, startup, and the options UI.
• dev/: tooling for developers. The packager leaves this folder out.

Never edit the manifests by hand. Regenerate them with dev/updatexmls.py. The script resolves each client's TOCs against the wow-ui-source* checkouts next to the repo, and it also reports:

• skin templates a flavor calls but never registers
• positional select(n, ...) child picks that break when a client adds a child

dev/forever_report.py rebuilds the gap analysis between Camelot and Mainline.

Every skin runs inside pcall. A skin written for frames that a client lacks therefore fails without an error message. After logging in on a new or updated client, run /aurora skinaudit to get the list of skins to fix.

Developer Notes

GameTooltip_InsertFrame: Aurora replaces this global. Its version differs from Blizzard's original in two ways:

• It passes the two Round() inputs through a SafeNumber() guard.
• It nil-guards GetLeftLine(2). Blizzard's original indexes that line without a check, and it errors on tooltips that have fewer than two lines.

Replacing a global has a cost: the global is then tainted for every secure caller. Blizzard's Blizzard_ItemUpgradeUI reads this global inside PlayUpgradedCelebration(), one line before C_ItemUpgrade.UpgradeItem(). The upgrade is therefore blocked whenever an item's effect text is long enough to reach the truncation branch.

/aurora insertframe toggles AuroraConfig.devRestoreInsertFrame. With it on, Aurora runs Blizzard's original, so you can test the affected surfaces and find out whether the replacement is still needed:

• LootHistory "all passed" tooltip (most likely to need the nil-guard)
• Professions reagent and reward tooltips
• Delve widget-set tooltips
• Garrison mission threat tooltips
• Quest-offer map pin tooltips
• Trinket upgrades in the item upgrade window

The toggle takes effect after /reload. While the replacement is off, Aurora prints a notice at load, so test runs are not misread.

ShouldShowMawBuffs: Aurora wraps this global so that it returns false while C_Secrets.ShouldAurasBeSecret() is true. Blizzard's version calls C_UnitAuras.GetAuraDataByIndex("player", 1, "MAW") without a guard. Under WoW 12's secret-aura rules, that call throws once addon code is running in the same execution. All three callers are inside the objective tracker's update and layout code, so the throw broke the delve and LFR stage blocks partway through layout.

This wrapper has the same taint cost, on a more frequently called path. The scenario tracker's UNIT_AURA handler reads the global, so every aura update carries Aurora's taint. In one 4.0.1 field log, this taint made up a quarter of all taint-log lines.

/aurora mawbuffs toggles AuroraConfig.devRestoreMawBuffs. With it on, Aurora leaves Blizzard's original in place, so you can measure whether the wrapper is still needed. To test:

1. Run an LFR wing and a delve with the objective tracker visible, once with the wrapper off and once with it on.
2. Compare the error counts and taint logs from the two runs.

The toggle takes effect after /reload. While the wrapper is off, Aurora prints a notice at load.

Bug Reports

Please report issues on GitHub. For support, discussion and quick troubleshooting help, join the RealUI Discord.