Is migrating a project back and forth from Binary to Source to Binary bad?

Development Programming & Scripting C++
,
1

Recently I got to the point in my project where I started thinking about multiplayer. I setup and planned replication stuff from the start, I just mean thinking about how to implement things like server browsers and such.

After reading around I noticed I needed to have a functioning [-ProjectName-Server.Target.cs] and so set about to do that.

I immediately ran into problems when it failed to compile, but a quick search online revealed the project needed to be migrated to a source compiled version of UE4. After a few days of work, I succeeded in downloading and compiling a source version, migrating the project to that version, and successfully compiled my project’s [Development Server] configuration. (with the resulting server files being created in [ … Binaries\Win64 ])

But when I went back to work to continue development, I noticed that compiling the project now took hours instead of the minutes it would normally take. Also the compile log was absolutely littered with countless module and “Creating library” messages that made it extremely difficult to parse the log and find any errors that may have happened.

This made working in source untenable, so I decided to migrate back to the previous binary version. I did so by right-clicking the project’s uproject file and selecting “switch unreal engine version”, then afterwards selecting “generate visual studio project files”, then opening the solution and compiling it.

Compiles are once again much faster and the compile log is again much clearer. Everything appears to be fine, but Im left wondering two things:

  1. Is it safe for the project to migrate back and forth between binary and source versions like that?

  2. Since I successfully compiled the [Development Server] configuration and the resulting [ … Binaries\Win64 ] server files are still there, does that mean the [-ProjectName-Server.exe] will still work for starting a dedicated server? or, will I need to eventually migrate back to source and recompile the [Development Server] configuration to update it in the future after the further development of the project?