Hi,
We have recently moved our project over from 4.13.2 to 4.16.2. The project is partly developed in C++. When working on the project within 4.13, it was possible to make changes to our game code, hit Build Game in VS(2015) and only the game code would be compiled, occasionally it would be required to force a recompile of FMOD plugin too, but that is pretty small in memory, so it has not been a problem.
Since moving to 4.16.2, I have made a small change to one of our source files, no change at all to the engine source, compiled the game source successfully with no errors, then when I have attempted to start the Editor, it claims that some DLLs are out of date, requiring a recompile. This then triggers a FULL engine rebuild.
I waited the roughly 1 hour, spending the time looking around for possible solutions to this scenario, once it completed (I had to do the build from within VS as it failed within the engine), I modified the GenerateProjectFiles removing the -engine options, rebuilt the project files, so that the sln would not have the engine code in it ready for the next change, I did not start VS, or change anything else. Started the engine, and was told that a few DLLs were out of date, I clicked OK (not much option really), and off we go AGAIN on another full engine build.
Please tell me how do I stop the UnrealBuildTool deciding that the engine needs rebuilding all the time, I have lost hours today watching already built code being pointlessly recompiled. There were the odd strange recompiles within 4.13 but they were rare, and never back to back. I think this must be the 3rd full engine recompile without changes.
Edit: I am having a new theory. I have just experienced another round of strange behavior, one symptom was VisualStudio claiming it couldn’t find the pdb for our project or most of the engine despite them clearly being there and freshly constructed.
Due to limitations of diskspace, all my project and engine source is on an external HDD which was mounted into an NTFS folder… When looking at the debug modules in VS I noticed that for DLL’s stored on the local disk the path was given as c:… however those stored on the external disk were something along the lines of /Device/Disk-2/Volume/blah/blah and then it was unable to find the pdb for some if not all. I tried the usual of shutting down VS, UE4, and even rebooting with no joy.
I have just remounted that disk as a drive letter and without recompiling or making any changes attempted to once again debug our project. This time all the symbols were located without issue.
Given this strange behavior from VS itself has lead me to wonder if perhaps UBT wasn’t always understanding or getting sensible file locations back from Windows and hence assuming the files hadn’t been compiled.