In Editor Preferences - General - Source Code - Accessor - Source Code Editor, I only have the option to chose VS altough I have plenty of other editors. I’d like to use another one, how can I do it? Do the editor have to be installed within Unreal? I dont get it. Id like solutions that do not implicate VS.
Hi Skimphy,
That list is populated by the classes that derive from ISourceCodeAccessor, and on Windows, only FVisualStudioSourceCodeAccessor is available by default.
We do have implementations for other editors, such as Code::Blocks and KDevelop, but those are currently only available on Linux.
What editor are you looking to use? If it’s not one we support, you could make your own plugin and implement the ISourceCodeAccessor interface to allow the editor to access it.
Thanks,
Jamie.
Thank you, I do use Code::Blocks, will a plugin work for windows too?
I also looking for VS alternatives 
whould be nice to have more options on Windows
Sorry, I misspoke. I meant CodeLite, not Code::Blocks.
Looking at the implementation of FCodeLiteSourceCodeAccessor, it looks that it’s currently hard-coded to only work on Linux… I’m not even sure that UBT will generate CodeLite projects on platforms other than Linux.
Do I have any options?
Well, we currently only officially support Visual Studio 2013 on Windows, so I’m afraid to say that your options in using editors other than VS will rely on your own ingenuity.
If you don’t want to go to the trouble of creating your own ISourceCodeAccessor plugin for the editor (and potentially even your own UBT project generator), then you do have the option of using other editors to handle your text editing, and then just invoke UBT to handle the building (I know people who do this with Sublime Text). It’s a simpler solution, but it does mean that debugging still has to be done in Visual Studio.
See the Linux C++ projects and IDE’s for configuration, more information, and plugins for several editors:
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For Qt Creator: GitHub - fire/QtCreatorSourceCodeAccess
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For VIM or EMACS: GitHub - fire/SensibleEditorSourceCodeAccess
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For Sublime Text: GitHub - erbridge/SublimeTextSourceCodeAccess: Allows access to source code with Sublime Text for UE4
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For KDevelop there is a plugin that comes with the engine source code that is aromatically built with UE4Editor.
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For Eclipse CDT: GitHub - mgerhardy/EclipseSourceCodeAccess: ISourceCodeAccessor implementation for Unreal 4 and Eclipse (also works for windows and mac)
I already have my scripts setup for Build and all from my favorite text editor, I just want to open it when I click on the file(line) of a error in the Compiler Log (typically after a Hot Reload).
Unity allows you to set the code editor with light settings (just pass the arguments file:line) so you can quickly switch editor. I understand that having a full interface with build scripts is better, but couldn’t there be a fallback interface implementation BasicSourceCodeAccessor : ISourceCodeAccessor that just supports OpenFileAtLine()?
It would use an application binary path member and a parameter format member. It shows an error if we try to do more, such as “Generate projects not implemented for BasicSourceCodeAccessor (MyCodeEditor): you need a plugin to provide full support to MyCodeEditor.”