Plugin Hot Reload

General Feedback & Requests
1

Hi.

I’ve been working on a plugin and one thing that’s no fun is making changes and not having the plugin hot reload. That would be a great feature… I know, I could simply create in the project space (not inside the plugin directory structure) and get it working 100%, but… Anyway, hopefully that could make it on your radar sometime in the future.

1 Like
2

Yes Please! This would make plugin development soo much less tedious <3!

3

I have to deal with this situation daily =

4

Not sure if I missed something, but plugin hot reload is working for me, not 100%, but most of the time it hot reload after recompile just fine.

5

I’ve not had much luck at all…! I’ll double-check!

6

This would be great :smiley:

7

I want this too. I’m working on a plugin to generate geometry and having to close down editor and restart it over and over is quite time consuming.

8

Hot Reload is experimental in 4.15 :slight_smile:

9

Wait, we have Plugin hot reload in 4.15? :rolleyes:

10

For plugins you mean?!

11

Does it work for editor modules too?

12

I’d like to know this as well! :slight_smile:

13

Ah, my bad, I misunderstood this as a request for a plugin to allow hot reloading. I’ll add this as a new request.

EDIT:

I was actually contacted about this by

"I have just found out that you can recompile and hot-reload c++ plugins without having to restart the editor every time. At the very top of the UE Window, you have to go to Window -> Developer Tools -> Modules. This is very hidden! And the twitch stream that was about plugins didn’t show this feature. Instead, the staff always restarted the editor.

Also, it seems like hardly any one knows about it. If I think how agonizing the need to restart the editor has been for me, I thought we should raise awareness. I suggest adding this information to Plugins in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation

There seem to be some limitations to when or what plugins can be compiled (someone hinted me at that). It would be great if those limitations could be explained on the Plugins Page as well"

Looks like there are new features I need to get acquainted with. Let me know if that doesn’t help.

2 Likes
14

Thanks ! Will be a big help!

15

Thank you ! I’ve been working on my editor plugin and I can confirm that the “Modules” window does allow me to recompile without completely closing the editor. It has been pretty handy!

16

…My life just got a lot easier.

17

Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t see any options in Modules besides “enable”. Switching which requires editor restart. Is it 4.15 feature?

18

It is not. Check if you have set up your plugin properly and if its not an editor plugin.
There are some constraints to using the module window, but I have no clue what they are.
It definitely works for enabled plugins that have runtime modules. (Maybe you didnt enable your plugin for your project?)

19

Ohh, I was looking in the wrong place. Works really well so far!

20

By the way, I recommend to build from VS and only recompile from Unreal Engine in order to hot reload. Because otherwise (at least in my case) the editor freezes