Compiling Unreal Engine From Source Code

For this setup, Visual Studio Community 2022 will be used as the base IDE instead of the recommended, but older Visual Studio Community 2019. There are several ways to install the IDE:

For this setup, VS Code will be used as the base IDE. There are several ways to install the IDE:

sudo rpm --import https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc
echo -e "[code]\nname=Visual Studio Code\nbaseurl=https://packages.microsoft.com/yumrepos/vscode\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc" | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/vscode.repo > /dev/null

dnf check-update
sudo dnf install code # or code-insiders

sudo apt install build-essential

sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools" "Development Libraries"

1. Install dependencies with Setup.bat

2. Since .NET 4.5 and older versions are no longer being maintained by Microsoft, all of the existing UE4 packages must be set to target at least .NET 4.6 or newer. Update all .csproj and app.config to use .NET 4.6 or newer.

   # Regex replace .NET 4.5 and lower to .NET 4.6 or newer.
   Get-ChildItem -Path . -Recurse -Filter "*.csproj" | ForEach-Object { (Get-Content -Raw $_) -replace "<TargetFrameworkVersion>v4\.[0-5].*<\/TargetFrameworkVersion>", "<TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.6.2</TargetFrameworkVersion>" | Set-Content -NoNewline $_ }
   
   # Regex replace .NET 4.5 and lower to .NET 4.6 or newer.
   Get-ChildItem -Path . -Recurse -Filter "*pp.config" | ForEach-Object { (Get-Content -Raw $_) -replace "NETFramework,Version=v4\.[0-6]", "NETFramework,Version=v4.8" | Set-Content -NoNewline $_ }

3. To enable GenerateProjectFiles.bat support for Visual Studio Community 2022, a new switch and MSBuild binary must be added to these files:

   <Option Name="VS2019" Restrict="true|false" DefaultValue="false" Description="Use Visual Studio 2019 to build Windows targets. By default, Visual Studio 2017 is used for maximum compatibility"/>
   
   <!-- Whether to use VS2022 -->
   <Option Name="VS2022" Restrict="true|false" DefaultValue="false" Description="Use Visual Studio 2022 to build Windows targets. By default, Visual Studio 2017 is used for maximum compatibility"/>
   ...
   <Property Name="VSCompilerArg" Value="-2019" If="$(VS2019)"/>
   <Property Name="VSCompilerArg" Value="-2022" If="$(VS2022)"/>

   public static bool TryGetMsBuildPath(out FileReference OutLocation)
   {
       // Get the Visual Studio 2022 install directory
       List<DirectoryReference> InstallDirs2022 = WindowsPlatform.FindVisualStudioInstallations(WindowsCompiler.VisualStudio2022).ConvertAll(x => x.BaseDir);
       foreach (DirectoryReference InstallDir in InstallDirs2022)
       {
           FileReference MsBuildLocation = FileReference.Combine(InstallDir, "MSBuild", "Current", "Bin", "MSBuild.exe");
           if (FileReference.Exists(MsBuildLocation))
           {
               OutLocation = MsBuildLocation;
               return true;
           }
       }
   ...
   }

4. Generate project files specifically for Visual Studio 2022.

   # This will generate project files specific to Visual Studio 2022
   .\GenerateProjectFiles.bat -2022

5. Open the generated .sln file with Visual Studio Community 2022.

6. Right-click UE5 and select Build or directly run the local debugger (F5) in Development Editor x64 configuration.

1. Install dependencies with Setup.command.
2. Generate project files with GenerateProjectFiles.command.
3. Open the generated Xcode workspace files according to your target platform. For this tutorial, open UE5 (Mac).xcworkspace.
4. Select UnrealEditor as the active schema.
5. (Optional) Add IDEPreferLogStreaming=YES to the schema environment variable to enable streaming logs into Xcode.
6. Build and wait for the project to compile and launch Unreal Editor.

1. Install dependencies with ./Setup.sh.
2. Generate project files with supports for VSCode using ./GenerateProjectFiles.sh -vscode.
3. Open the generated .code-workspace file with VSCode.
4. Run the debugger profile Launch UnrealEditor (Development).
5. Wait for the compilation to finish. It will launch the Unreal Editor once the compilation is completed.