How to Specify Unreal Engine Source/Project Compiler Toolchain and SDK

Development Platform & Builds
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3

Thank you very much @rohitsutreja this was exactly what I needed!

I package a plugin for multiple versions of UE (from 4.27 to 5.5) and setting the toolchain version in the BuildConfiguration.xml was causing issues:

  • The ones located in the AppData and in the user’s Documents are shared by all engine versions.
  • I tried to add one in the Engine/Saved/UnrealBuildTool but it doesn’t seem to work (maybe this one is used only when building the engine from source?)
  • I package the plugin from command line, which creates a temporary project to compile it. So it was not an option to set it per-project.

However, using the .ini files allow me set a custom toolchain version per engine (not per project).
To do that I’ve just modified the file <ENGINE_DIR>/Engine/Config/BaseEngine.ini with the compiler version and the toolchain version.
For example, for UE 5.3 I’ve modified C:/Program Files/Epic Games/UE_5.3/Engine/Config/BaseEngine.ini by adding those 2 lines in the WindowsTargetSettings group (by searching Windows in the file):

CompilerVersion="14.38.33130"
ToolchainVersion="14.38.33130"

So at the end it looks like that in the BaseEngine.ini file:

...

[/Script/WindowsTargetPlatform.WindowsTargetSettings]
+D3D12TargetedShaderFormats=PCD3D_SM5
+D3D11TargetedShaderFormats=PCD3D_SM5
bEnableDistanceFields=true
bEnableRayTracing=true
bTarget32Bit=false
CompilerVersion="14.38.33130"
ToolchainVersion="14.38.33130"

...
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