Shrink size of engine build

Development Programming & Scripting C++
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1

Hey,

has anyone of you some tips for which files can be safely removed / ignored in the build xml to reduce the size of the build? For example can I somehow remove the starter content and the feature packs? And if yes, how do I do this? Because we don’t need these and I wonder how “small” I can get an editor build from source.

Is there any documentation available for how to do this? Any tipp would help because otherwise it’s trial and error for me which takes some time.

Thanks!

2

I often wish UE4 had an option to strip unwanted platform files from source. A lean version of the engine (ie. Windows-only) resulting in significant storage, processing, and network savings.

3

Use the Unreal binary builderto create a binary build.

Compress the results with 7-zip, minus intermediates etc.

MakeBuild.bat:


set "Bin=C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe"
set "Target=<Some Directory>\SomeFIle.7z"
set "Source=<Where your source built engine is>"
set "Switches=-r -x!*.pdb -xr!Intermediate -xr!Marketplace -xr!FeaturePacks -xr!Samples -xr!Templates -xr!Extras -xr!Documentation -xr!Source"

"%Bin%" a -t7z "%Target%" "%Source%\LocalBuilds\Engine\Windows\*.*" %Switches%

pause

Note the “-xr!Marketplace” makes it exclude Marketplace plugins.
Makes it easier to update them, since you don’t have to re-do the entire engine.

The result is a build suitable for artists and Blueprint only programming.
For any C++ work, you will still need to include source, intermediates and so on.

Using the above setup, the compressed version we distribute via Perforce is ~2GB.
Uncompressed it is ~4.55GB, minus marketplace plugins that is.

A lot better then 40+GB that the standard binary build you get via Epic launcher takes up.

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