I have disabled a bunch of plugins that my simple project doesn’t need. restarted the editor and I can no longer package my project that was working fine for weeks as I need to install VS. I understand that enabling a plugin could change the project requirements but not the other way. This is a blue print project and has no custom code.
Then I restored the project from git (I assume active plugins are stored in the project file) and the problem is still there. The only way to package the project now is by disabling the “full rebuild” but I expect this to break at some point in the future as I’m only avoiding the compilation by using something already precompiled in the cache.
How can I debug it? How can I get to the previous state? How can I find which plugin triggers the VS requirements (maybe I don’t need that plugin).
I have two major problems with this:
I no longer trust the git repo as way to undo my test changes
I no longer trust unreal which stops me from experimenting.
It’s interesting to hear that disabling some plugins caused such an issue I would expect that to happen when you enable certain ones.
And I understand, it can be really frustrating to not being able to access the older versions of your project. But you haven’t lost any progress! So we can totally make your project all good for packaging again
I could suggest creating a new blank project and comparing the plugins with yours but that could be a pain to do So why don’t you try migrating all of your assets to a new blank project instead?
To Migrate
Make sure that all of the plugins that you use in your original project are enabled in the new project that we’re gonna migrate our assets to. It’s fine if there are additional ones though, that won’t be a problem.
Once that’s done, you can migrate your assets by right clicking on them, navigating to Asset Actions on the menu that pops up, clicking on the Migrate option under that, then not deselecting any dependencies from the window that pops up and just hitting OK, and finally selecting the Content folder of the new blank project as their new home.
You can also migrate multiple assets at once, or even migrate a folder as a whole! When you right click on a folder, the Migrate option won’t be hidden under any additional menus.
I also wanna address these concerns of yours:
Neighter Unreal nor Git has anything to do with your issue. It’s your responsibility to manually back up your project especially before doing things like enabling / disabling plugins, upgrading the engine version, or manually adjusting the project files.
More Tips
You should not only manually back up your project for the cases I mentioned, but also on milestones. That’s because there can be times when even reverting your project to an older version doesn’t fix certain issues, or you might not be able to revert at all! Only relying on source control to save your progress is not safe.
You should also be careful while enabling plugins if you’re planning to release your project. Some plugins are experimental and are discouraged to enable in a project that’s meant for release, which you’ll notice from the warning that pops up when you try to enable them. Realistically, it’s not something to worry about but wanned to mention that as well.
my project was backed up before I made any changes.
I see in the diff that the list of plugins is stored in uproject file, which means that the restored project from a backup should have not required VS, however it did when the “full rebuild” was turned on. I’m not sure what part of the project might have affected that. Potentially deleting all intermediate files from previous builds would have fixed it but I have never tried it.
The obvious solution was to install VS to get it all going.
It is disconcerting, however that disabling plugins can have such a drastic effect on the project.
from a programmer point of view I would like to be able to trace plugin’s effect on the project. I wasn’t able to find anything in the logs that would suggest which plugin or what part of the project triggered VS but maybe I didn’t dig deep enough to find this information.
Unreal engine itself is a VS solution, I may be wrong but I thought you had to have it to use UE, though I base my games in c++ never done just blueprints
I would expect that to happen when you enable certain ones.
So why don’t you try migrating all of your assets to a new blank project instead?
