UE-Assist

A small collection of scripts to assist developing Unreal projects in Windows.

Setup

1. Clone or download the repo.
2. Add its directory to your path.
3. Enter the appropriate values in config.ini.

Example config.ini

Since I still have Unreal 5.2 and installed it via the EGS my config.ini is the following:

[Settings]
unreal_version: 5.2
unreal_association: 5_2

[Paths]
editor_exe: C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.2\Engine\Binaries\Win64\UnrealEditor.exe
ubt_exe: C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.2\Engine\Binaries\DotNET\UnrealBuildTool\UnrealBuildTool.exe

Usage

ue-assist [options]

• -a <uproject file> Adds batch scripts to an existing project & creates a .dir-locals.el file (overwriting any existing one).
• -p <name> [<directory>] Creates a project with given name in given directory if directory is not given creates a project in the current directory. Creates a basic .gitignore and prompts you to run git init . for version control.
  • <name> can only be letters
  • <directory> must be empty
• -c <origin> <target> Parses origin file for compilation commands and outputs to target. NOTE: called by generate.bat to make compile_commands.json for the lsp server. This gets run automatically by generate.bat (don't expect good results if you run it manually).
• -v Prints the version & licensing information.
• -h Prints usage information.

LSP Notes

The LSP server only works Microsoft's clangd. You can install it by either downloading (or modifying an existing installation of) Visual Studios OR Visual Studio Build Tools. After that choose to install individual components and make sure to have both MSBuild support for LLVM toolset and C++ Clang Compiler for Windows selected for installation. If you already have another clangd living in your path you have to set up each project to use Microsoft's clangd instead. If you're using Emacs ue-assist.py creates a .dir-locals.el file you can use to set said variable.

Project Batch Scripts

ue-assist creates batch-scripts to assist in IDE-less development on windows. No debugging options atm, but I still use VS for that :(

• build.bat builds the editor.
• editor.bat launches the editor.
• generate.bat creates compile_commands.json so you can use clangd as your LSP server. This allows for code-completion, jump-to-definitions, syntax highlighting, linting, etc. The output compile_commands.json works great for source files but is still kind of buggy for header files As of 1.1.0 it works for header files! Whenever you add, remove, or rename a source or header file you need to run this then restart your LSP (lsp-workspace-restart on emacs) for it to pick up the new changes. Overall, much faster than by creating source & header files in the editor.
  • NOTE: -noIntelliSense appears to be bugged :(

You should bind them to macros/functions if your text editor allows for it.

Why -vscode in generate.bat?

I know UBT can generate compile_commands.json via -projectFiles -mode=GenerateClangDatabase, but I tested it with clangd and it did not work well (this is for Windows, after all). I'd much rather use -mode=GenerateClangDatabase since it doesn't generate (ultimately) extraneous files, so if you know how to get it working on a Windows machine I'd love the help!