How do you build from the command line on OSX?

There are a number of questions relating to how to build from the command line, for example Automated test results from command line - AnswerHub - Unreal Engine Forums, however, none of them appear to work on OSX.

Tok:Engine doug$ Build/BatchFiles/RunUAT.sh BuildCookRun -nop4 -project="/Users/doug/Documents/Unreal\ Projects/Hello/Hello.uproject" -stage -archive -archivedirectory="/tmp/hello" -package -targetplatform=Darwin

Running AutomationTool...

Setting up Mono
Compiling AutomationTool with xbuild
xbuild Source/Programs/AutomationTool/AutomationTool_Mono.csproj /p:Configuration=Development /p:Platform=AnyCPU /verbosity:quiet /nologo /p:TargetFrameworkProfile= /p:TargetFrameworkVersion=v4.5
The assembly mscorlib.dll was not found or could not be loaded.
It should have been installed in the `/Users/doug/dev/unreal/UnrealEngine/Engine/Binaries/ThirdParty/Mono/Mac/lib/mono/2.0/mscorlib.dll' directory.
RunUAT ERROR: AutomationTool failed to compile.

Is my version of mono wrong (how would the Microsoft mscorlib.dll even possibly exist on osx?)? If so, what version do I need?

How do you do this on a mac?

Some people (How can I execute UE4Editor on the command line as a different user than what is logged in? - Programming & Scripting - Unreal Engine Forums) seem to invoke the UE4Editor directly, but that was for an old version of UE.

Edit: After installing the binaries, it still doesn’t work, but with a different error:

InternalUtils.SafeFileExists: SafeFileExists /Users/doug/Documents/Unreal/ Projects/Hello/Hello.uproject=False
InternalUtils.SafeFileExists: SafeFileExists /Users/doug/dev/unreal/UnrealEngine/Users/doug/Documents/Unreal/ Projects/Hello/Hello.uproject=False
InternalUtils.SafeFileExists: SafeFileExists /Users/doug/dev/unreal/UnrealEngine/Engine/Programs/AutomationTool/Saved/Rules/UATRules_BaseEngine_.dll=False
ProjectUtils.CompileAndLoadTargetsAssembly: Compiling targets DLL: /Users/doug/dev/unreal/UnrealEngine/Engine/Programs/AutomationTool/Saved/Rules/UATRules_BaseEngine_.dll
BuildCommand.Execute: ERROR: BUILD FAILED
Program.Main: ERROR: AutomationTool terminated with exception:
Program.Main: ERROR: Exception in AutomationTool: All branches must have the blank project /Samples/Sandbox/BlankProject
Stacktrace:   at AutomationTool.BranchInfo..ctor (System.Collections.Generic.List`1 InHostPlatforms) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at BuildCookRun.get_ProjectPath () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at BuildCookRun.ExecuteBuild () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at BuildCommand.Execute () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
Program.Main: ERROR: All branches must have the blank project /Samples/Sandbox/BlankProject
ProcessManager.KillAll: Trying to kill 0 spawned processes.
Program.Main: AutomationTool exiting with ExitCode=1
Domain_ProcessExit
ProcessManager.KillAll: Trying to kill 0 spawned processes.
RunUAT ERROR: AutomationTool was unable to run successfully.

Mono is an implementation of C# runtime and uses Windows convention for files extensions (.dll, .exe)

As for the problem you’re having, it seems that you didn’t run Setup.command after downloading the code from GitHub.

I’d love to say that fixed it (and I suppose it did…) but all it did was lead me onto another different error…

Try ā€œ/Users/doug/Documents/Unreal Projects/Hello/Hello.uprojectā€ instead of ā€œ/Users/doug/Documents/Unreal\ Projects/Hello/Hello.uprojectā€

UE4Editor: [2015.03.16-15.47.06:365][ 0]The game module ā€˜Hello’ does not appear to be up to date. This may happen after updating the engine.

…

ErrorReporter.Error: ERROR: AutomationTool error: No files found to deploy for /Users/doug/Documents/Unreal Projects/Hello/Binaries/Mac/Hello.app with wildcard * and exclusions

Any ideas?

It does actually work when I run with only -cook, which is awesome! …but I can’t actually generate an .app; it just creates an empty folder in /tmp/hello/MacNoEditor/

It looks like you didn’t build the editor, or your project’s editor dylib.

…isn’t building the project what this command line tool is supposed to do?

At any rate, how do I build the project’s editor dylib then?
I did just build the editor, an couple of hours ago:

Tok:Engine doug$ ls -l Binaries/Mac/UE4Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/UE4Editor
-rwxr-xr-x 1 doug staff 443208 16 Mar 22:11 Binaries/Mac/UE4Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/UE4Editor

No, this command line is for packaging the game

To build from command line you can use Build.sh script. Something like this:

cd /Users/doug/dev/unreal/UnrealEngine

./Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Mac/Build.sh HelloEditor Mac Development "/Users/doug/Documents/Unreal Projects/Hello/Hello.uproject"

The final solution to my original question is:

  1. Clone the source from github: Unreal Engine 4 on GitHub - Unreal Engine

  2. Run Setup.sh to install all the binary components

  3. Build the project; GenerateProjectFiles.sh && xcodebuild -target "UE4Editor - Mac"

When that eventually finishes you are now ā€˜setup’ to run command line builds.

Then if you have a project in ~/dev/unreal/projects/HelloWorld, you can build it using:

./Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Mac/Build.sh HelloWorldEditor Mac Development ~/dev/unreal/projects/HelloWorld/HelloWorld.uproject
Obviously the exact target is not ā€˜HelloWorldEditor’ in all cases; but the build tool will list available build targets if it’s not; pick the appropriate one.

Thanks so much for you time! Finally got this working now.

Actually, you don’t need to build the editor in step 3 using xcodebuild and the Xcode project. You can do this:

./Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Mac/Build.sh UE4Editor Mac Development

Also, building HelloWorldEditor target will build the editor itself as well if needed. It’s packaging (cooking, to be more precise), that you were trying to run earlier with RunUAT, that requires the editor to be already built.

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