Cannot Compile While Editor Open

Development Programming & Scripting C++
1

Hi, I decided to try out a C++ third person demo project and it builds happily, but only when the editor is not open. Is this intentional? It’s very disruptive to workflow to have to close the editor and reopen to recompile the code.

The specific error is: 1>LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file ‘C:\Users\Matt\Documents\Unreal Projects\KillingSpree\Binaries\Win64\UE4Editor-KillingSpree.dll’

Which of course makes me think the dll is just loaded in the engine and write-locked. I am using Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit, Visual Studio 2013 Express, and Unreal Engine 4.2.1.

2

When the editor is open, you should use the “Compile” button in the editor, not F7 in VS. The latter will complain because the editor takes ownership of the dlls when it’s open.

Make sure you watch for the successful hot reload message (in yellow). Sometimes it will fail the hot reload, which means you should shut down the editor and launch again. I use F5 from VS.

1 Like