What?

When Minecraft releases a game update, it often makes resource packs outdated. This is because a specific version of the game is hard-coded into the packs’ metadata. Assuming no actual changes have been made to the way resource packs are handled by the game, this script will go into a resource pack (which is stored as a compressed file), and change the hard-coded version to a desired game version, thereby updating the resource pack.

Why?

Every time the game loads with an outdated resource pack, it halts you with a dialog box to confirm you wish to proceed. While not a major inconvenience, its simple solution just asked to be solved with a bit of automation.

How?

The tool is a simple Python script that unpacks the compressed file, accesses its metadata, and changes the value of pack_format, which indicates which game version the pack is suitable for.