I want to build UE4 from its source but is there any other application other than Visual Studio which can help me do that?

Development Pipeline & Plugins
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1

My net connection is a bit slow, thus I wont be able to download the Visual Studio, is there any other application thus which I can use for this purpose.

2

If you are able to download UE4 I don’t see why you won’t be able to download visual studio…
Anyway, the short answer is no. You need Visual Studio 2015

3

Just to compare:

  • VS2015 3.6Gb download
  • Unreal Engine 4 ~3.5Gb download
4

Hi Shay.Cormac,

Unfortunately Visual Studio 2015 is currently required in order to be able to build the Engine from source code. We are considering possibly allowing other IDE’s to be used in the future, but that is unlikely to happen soon.

5

, is the answer given here true at UE4.21.2 - that Visual Studio is still required to build the Engine from source?

Thanks,
Jarrod

6

Hi Jarrod,

Yes. Visual Studio, and in particular the Visual C++ compiler, is still required to build the Engine from source on Windows. The Engine does currently support using either CLion or VSCode when editing code projects, but you will still need the Visual C++ compiler in order to build a code project since neither of these editors includes a compiler by default.

Theoretically it is possible to use a different compiler, but that may require modifying Engine code that is specifically looking for Visual Studio and its compiler. Unfortunately that is not something that we would be able to provide assistance with.

7

Master branch now supports Clang.

https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/pull/5376

8

You can use Clang with the Engine, but my understanding is that there are still some build configurations that do not work correctly with Clang. Our testing department does not currently use Clang when testing the Engine, and we cannot make any guarantees that what works now will continue to work in future Engine versions.