Installation

DistrictWarden is a single Paper plugin. The land- and shop-management plugins it works with are soft dependencies: install them if you want the matching feature, leave them out and only that feature is disabled.

Requirements

Requirement	Detail
Server software	Paper 1.21.x (api-version: 1.21)
Java	21
Land management	GriefDefender — without it, no properties are tracked
Shops	QuickShop-Hikari — without it, no shops are tracked
Archive backend	WorldEdit or FastAsyncWorldEdit — for the forthcoming property-block archive
Optional	MineMail for in-game mailbox notices; Vault and PlaceholderAPI are recognised if present

Every integration is declared as a softdepend, so DistrictWarden loads after these plugins when they are present and never stops your server from starting when one is missing.

Install steps

1. Put the jar in place. Drop DistrictWarden-<version>.jar into plugins/ and start the server once. It creates plugins/DistrictWarden/config.yml and plugins/DistrictWarden/storage.yml with defaults.

2. Choose your worlds. Until you set worlds.enabled, DistrictWarden logs a warning that it will not manage anything. Edit config.yml:

   worlds:
     enabled: [shopping]
     disabled: []

   See Configuration → Choosing worlds.

3. Apply the change. Run /dw reload to re-read config.yml, then /dw reconcile to read the claims and shops in the newly managed worlds into the database.

4. Check the console. With GriefDefender and QuickShop-Hikari installed you should see DistrictWarden report the properties and shops it discovered. If either is missing it logs a clear line explaining which feature is disabled.

Nothing is managed until a world is enabled

With worlds.enabled empty, DistrictWarden tracks nothing, monitors nothing, and refuses to act on anything even with staff approval. This is deliberate — it will not touch a world you did not nominate.

After first start the plugin folder holds two files:

plugins/
└── DistrictWarden/
    ├── config.yml
    └── storage.yml

Properties, shops, warnings, archives and the audit log all live in the database (SQLite by default; see Configuration → Storage).

Quick test

1. As an op, claim some land with GriefDefender in your enabled world.
2. Run /dw reconcile, then /dw status — the claim should appear as a property with status ACTIVE.
3. Build a QuickShop-Hikari shop inside the claim, run /dw reconcile, then /dw shops — the shop should be listed with its item and state.
4. Dig below the surface inside the claim and try to spawn a mob with a spawn egg — the spawn should be cancelled, while the same egg works above ground.

If a claim never appears, see Troubleshooting → A claim never appears.

Updating

Drop the new jar in and restart. New keys are merged into your existing config.yml, and database migrations run automatically at startup. storage.yml changes still need a restart — swapping the database under a running server is not supported.

Building from source

DistrictWarden is a multi-module Maven project (Java 21).

mvn clean install

The shaded plugin jar is written to districtwarden-paper/target/DistrictWarden-<version>.jar. GriefDefender, QuickShop-Hikari and Paper all resolve from public repositories, so there are no manual dependency steps.

Module	Role
districtwarden-api	Public interfaces, models, provider SPIs, API entry point
districtwarden-core	Lifecycle engines, repositories, migrations, config
districtwarden-paper	Plugin bootstrap, commands, dependency detection, shaded jar
districtwarden-provider-griefdefender	Property provider backed by GriefDefender claims
districtwarden-provider-quickshop-hikari	Shop provider backed by QuickShop-Hikari
districtwarden-provider-worldedit	Archive provider (WorldEdit API; FAWE-compatible)
districtwarden-provider-discord, districtwarden-provider-mail	Notification providers

districtwarden-core depends only on the provider interfaces in districtwarden-api, never on a concrete provider. Providers are registered at bootstrap based on which soft dependencies are present. The distributable artifact is districtwarden-paper, which shades every module into one jar.