Single line change in engine source causes full ~30 minute recompile

Development Programming & Scripting C++
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1

Guys,

I make a single one line change to a header file in the Engine (For example FloatingPawnMovement.h), and I try to compile and bam I’m hit with a full on recompile at ~30 minutes. Is this what I should expect?

In comparison same one line change in C++ in the Game Project yields 15 seconds recompile time and is as I expect as only files that are affected are recompiled.

This makes it very difficult to impossible to play around with the Engine Source code.

Anyone else facing similar frustration or is it just me and I somehow have something wrong?

Thanks for any help or feedback.

2

That’s the nature of dependency: the higher something is in the dependency graph, the more things are effected by the change. Your game project is a leaf in that graph, so the knock-on effect is minimal. In reality, you should feel you have a good reason for modifying headers in the engine source (source files being fine); there’s a chance that what you really want to do is extend rather than modify. And you really shouldn’t feel the need to do it frequently; it’s a sign you might be taking the wrong approach