Making an UE installed build for Windows11, what I'd have liked to know before making one

Development Programming & Scripting C++
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To be clear this is about making a distributable build of your own branch of Unreal Engine to distribute to your team. This also known as installed build of unreal engine.
This is not about the game you are making but about the editor you are using to make the game.
The result is a zipable unreal engine folder you can copy paste from machine to machine. Or even some could commit it on source control (altough I do not)

So this comes after you’ve forked UE on github and after you’ve successfully built it in visual studio.

The first thing is to read that page despite it being a bit confusing and outdated:

1-Prerequistes

  • Windows SDK: My experience is on Windows 11: and despite what the documentation is saying I downloaded and installed the Windows 11 sdk instead of windows 10 sdk.
  • Windows DotNet 6.0 Runtime: I suspect the build process of using dotnet 8.0 but I installed DotNet 6.0 Runtime anyway.

2-Making the actual build

  • I am running that command line from within a bat file placed at the same level as the UE5.sln :
    Engine\Build\BatchFiles\RunUAT.bat BuildGraph -script=Engine/Build/InstalledEngineBuild.xml -target="Make Installed Build Win64" -nosign -set:GameConfigurations=Development;Shipping -set:WithWin64=true -set:WithAndroid=false -set:WithDDC=false -set:WithLinux=false -set:WithLinuxArm64=false -set:WithIOS=false -set:WithTVOS=false -set:WithMac=false -clean
  • Double clicking it will start the very long process of making the installed build more than 4 hours on a Ryzen 7 3700X. (didn’t measure this preciselly)
  • I tend to run it in the evening so that the result is ready by morning.
  • It should create a “LocalBuilds” folder were the installed build is when the process is finished
  • The result is space hungry so make sure you have about 100Gigs available before starting the process
  • You can then move that “LocalBuilds” folder to wherever you need it, zip it distribute it !

I will update this post with more as I learn new stuff, to share and for my own documentation.

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Additional observation: running BuildGraph to make an installed build will “Clean” the visual studio solution and that means if you previously compiled using visual studio you will have to compile again from scratch.
So it may be worth it to have two check outs of your unreal engine repo: one for coding and one for running the installed build.
If you don’t do that prepare for long compile times that shouldn’t happen in the first place.

removing the “-clean” option from your command line does not seem to do much. However sometimes it does make the build faster sometimes doesn’t (most of the time it will rebuild all from scratch)

If your “LocalBuilds” folder does not appear that means the BuildGraph process is not reaching its “copy file” part debug it by running the command line from command window so that you may read the error output (bat file will close the window immediatelly if there is an error preventing you from reading it). I spent about 3 days figuring out that last one.

Last tip: if you want to customize you LocalBuilds folder you can using the -set:BuiltDirectory=“C:/Custom/Path” option.