Clone And Run

[LCMark]

I've just integrated a new 'feature' into the 'develop' branch aimed at making engine-dev easier.

When you run an IDE engine from the git repository, the IDE will now search for all binary components (and related resources) 'locally', rather than where it would expect to find them if it were an installation. In particular, it does this without requiring any configuration of the debug paths or environment variables.

Specifically:

The engine will load the ide from within the 'ide' submodule (no need to set REV_TOOLS_PATH, or the executable working folder).

The IDE will load all the externals in the relevant subfolder of _build.

The standalone builder will use components from the relevant subfolder of _build.

Now there are a couple of things to bear in mind: if you run the IDE engine as 'Debug', it will use 'debug' components for everything and if you run the IDE engine as 'Release', it will use 'release' components for everything; for Desktop platforms, the standalone builder will only build standalones for the platform it is running on. (You can build iOS/Android in addition on all desktop platforms - if applicable).

So, to use it you simply need to build all the binary components for the desktop platform you are on; then also all the components for iOS/Android (for iOS, you need to make sure that the platform you build against is what you want to use in the IDE in terms of simulator version, or for standalone building you need a device build) if you want to test those. Once this is done, launch the IDE engine (say through Xcode using Run/Run and Debug) and the IDE should act as if the components you have compiled had been built into an installer and installed.

[monte]

Thanks that will be a big help!

[monte]

I haven't played with this yet but is there a chance the IDE might work out it's being opened in this mode and use a separate set of preferences? In particular keeping the user extensions separate could be important for testing...

[mwieder]

"Clone and Run" sounds like a strategy for a game that somebody really should create.