UE4 source build issues

Development Platform & Builds
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1

Hello, I use a build from source.

There are some issues for me.

I use Development Editor and x64 config for project build.
I have UE4 unchecked in project dependencies.
I set “MyProject” as startup project in vs.

For Visual Studio 2019 - I have all needed packages installed.

  1. When I use “re-build myproject only” option that re-builds whole engine.
  2. When I clean the project with “myProject only” option that cleans whole engine build.
  3. ShaderCompilerWorker, UnrealHeaderTool and MyProject. Those three are cleaned when I clean the project using “clean only this project” but I think those needed to be checked true in project dependencies in order to build the project. I suspect those cause the “cleaning” of engine files.
  4. When I use build option that builds as expected without building the whole engine but at “MyProject\Binaries\Win64” path, I see numeric UE4Editor-MyPorject.dll and UE4Editor-MyPorject.pdb files just like:
    UE4Editor-MyPorject-001.dll
    UE4Editor-MyPorject-001.pdb
    UE4Editor-MyPorject-002.dll
    UE4Editor-MyPorject-002.pdb
    UE4Editor-MyPorject-003.dll
    UE4Editor-MyPorject-003.pdb
    … (this array cause gigabytes of data!)
    I can delete previous ones and continue working but everytime I build the project during runtime, I get additional files. It does not write on existing ones. What am I doing wrong here ? Additionally, can I modify outputs to not write “00n” files but only overwrite “UE4Editor-MyPorject”
2

I don’t think it always cleans up the old libraries/ binaries when you rebuild and sometimes results in duplicates that are hard or impossible to distinguish new from old in a timely manner…

Unfortunately I don’t know why and haven’t yet heard any viable explanations on whether this is expected behaviour or a bug. Being source builds you’re in no mans land as most people seem to be using binary builds it seems.

In many cases these uncleaned files will cause your project to failed to package when you get that far because the engine cant distinguish what its supposed to use and have caused countless hours of lost time i have found that out the hard way.

I don’t see a lot of people talking about source builds so its hard to figure out why it doesn’t clean up and sometimes it does. I’ve had to delete certain files and binaries like the ones you’re talking about before I build as a precaution because I know it’ll just recreate them on top of the old and screw everything up and waste a ton of time.

I don’t advocate on deleting anything unless you’re totally sure about what you’re deleting and always make a back up. For me, that was something I had to do or it just created a mess of duplicate binaries and libraries or wrote on top of them. All over the place and no consistency whatsoever… Once the engine was built and my project was set up properly simply building the project wasn’t much other than waiting for it to compile…