Custom engine build & project files

[MXADD]

Hi

I’v downloaded UE4 sources from github, made some modifications inside engine renderer (for example added new lighting model and so on), build up engine and distributed the whole /Engine directory (without /Intermediate subdir) to my co-workers.
Now they’v associated our game with this custom engine version (right click on uproject & ‘switch unreal engine version …’ & show new /Engine directory).
Then they’v right click on uproject & ‘generate visual studio project files’.
And now is the problem - the generated .sln contains more projects than the original one (generated using ‘standard UE 4.8.3’) the additional targets are in /Programs solution folder, and when they build the .sln, whole engine is build once again …
The reason for this is that the shell extension to generate project files executes for ‘custom’ engine this:

UnrealBuildTool.exe -projectfiles -project=“path/to/project” -game -engine -progress

and for the ‘standard’ UE 4.8.3

UnrealBuildTool.exe -projectfiles -project=“path/to/project” -game -rocket -progress

is there any obvious solution for this ? (I want my co-workers to work ONLY on game, not on the whole engine)

[enlight_2014]

Here’s something from the UE 4.8 release notes that may be relevant:

UnrealBuildTool now supports creating precompiled distributions for any targets, similar to the releases which can be downloaded from the launcher. Teams which do not expect to modify the engine source often may wish to take advantage of this workflow for faster iteration times.

• To create precompiled modules, override the GetModulesToPrecompile() in your target.cs file and add a list of modules to build, then build the target using UnrealBuildTool passing the -precompile argument.
• To use precompiled modules, modify the UnrealBuildTool command line to include the “-useprecompiled” argument (or pass -useprecompiled on the command line to GenerateProjectFiles.bat).

[MXADD]

After a while I’v looked into shell extension source code, to see what triggers the -engine vs. -rocket behaviour, it turns out that IF in the distribution I provide to co-workers there is a file Engine\Build\SourceDistribution.txt
then the shell extension will add -engine flag, if this file is not present ‘normal’ -rocket flag is added … so basically I’v removed this file from binary repository of our custom engine and all is fine, co-workers can use it as ‘normal’ engine and dont’s suffer from loooong compilation times

[Elou44]

@MXADD

After a while I’v looked into shell extension source code, to see what triggers the -engine vs. -rocket behaviour, it turns out that IF in the distribution I provide to co-workers there is a file Engine\Build\SourceDistribution.txt
then the shell extension will add -engine flag, if this file is not present ‘normal’ -rocket flag is added … so basically I’v removed this file from binary repository of our custom engine and all is fine, co-workers can use it as ‘normal’ engine and dont’s suffer from loooong compilation times

The simple solution pointed by MXADD worked for me! you so much!