After a good two years of planning to make some contributions to Godot, I’ve finally gotten around to doing it.
If it could not be more obvious, life has gotten in the way once again. I had originally started writing this at the start of 2024, and now six months later, after being flummuxed by a stream of bs, am going to publish it. My contributions to Godot and other projects, however, will be delayed by about a month.
I had originally started this post due to my intention to make some contributions to the documentation, but seeing that they’ve been done already, I’ll continue with my normal ramblings.
Building the Documentation
You can easily install sphinx by following this. If you install Godot’s build systems stuff with scoop, you also get python, meaning that you can just run
pip install -U sphinx
You also need to install setuptools with pip install setuptools
Then you need to install the dependencies in the requirements.txt with pip install -r ./requirements.txt
After that, you should be able to build the documents. If you want to build all of it, you can run something like sphinx-build ./ ./_build. If you want to build only specific files, you can run something like sphinx-build ./ ./_build ./contributing/development/configuring_an_ide/visual_studio_code.rst
I was originally going to contribute some improvements to the godot-docs repo at the start of the year but I didn’t have time. By the time I went to update my fork, I saw that someone had already added most of what I had wanted regarding VSCode build & intellisense configuration.
Building the Engine
To build for Windows, the best place to start is the documentation. I prefer using VSCode, and the relevant page is now also very good. Make sure that the properties in c_cpp_properties.json correspond to the compiler you are using (i.e. use msvc, gcc, etc).
Scoop is the easiest way to setup the build system by far, and has a plethora of other things to simplify downloading and managing tools (i.e. Jekyll). It installs python, jekyll, g++…
Recently, using the dev_build=yes option causes the build to not be able to run on the targeted platform. Simply remove it from tasks.json for now, and make sure to make the corresponding name change in launch.json (remove dev from the program name).
To follow the engine c++ style guides, it is recommended to use clang-format
Go to the latest llvm release, download the build for your platform (i.e. clang+llvm-x-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.tar.xz for windows), extract, and take the clang-format.exe file and add it to your PATH.
tasks.json
{
// See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=733558
// for the documentation about the tasks.json format
"version": "2.0.0",
"tasks": [
{
"label": "echo",
"type": "shell",
"command": "echo Hello"
},
{
"label": "build",
"group": "build",
"type": "shell",
"command": "scons",
"args": [
// enable for debugging with breakpoints
//"dev_build=yes", //enabling devbuild for some reason breaks platform
"compiledb=yes",
"-j4",
"platform=windows",
"tests=yes",
//"dev_mode=yes" //https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/contributing/development/core_and_modules/unit_testing.html#running-tests
//"werror=yes" //It's erroring out on stuff that isn't mine, great
],
"problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
},
]
}
launch.json
{
// Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes.
// Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
// For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Launch Project",
"type": "cppvsdbg",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/bin/godot.windows.editor.x86_64.exe",
//"program": "${workspaceFolder}/bin/godot.windows.editor.dev.x86_64.exe",
// Change the arguments below for the project you want to test with.
// To run the project instead of editing it, remove the "--editor" argument.
"args": [ "--editor", "--path", "${workspaceFolder}/../godot-custom-playground/" ],
"stopAtEntry": false,
"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
"environment": [],
"console": "internalConsole",
"visualizerFile": "${workspaceFolder}/platform/windows/godot.natvis",
"preLaunchTask": "build"
},
{
"name": "Run Tests",
"type": "cppvsdbg",
"request": "launch",
"program": "${workspaceFolder}/bin/godot.windows.editor.x86_64.console.exe",
"args": [
"--test",
"-ns", //Don't skip
"-s", //not really needed... print on success
"-d", //Print duration, avoids having to do own performance timing code
"--test-case=*[Image]*"
],
"stopAtEntry": false,
"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
"environment": [],
"console": "internalConsole", //Test results will be printed to the debug console
"visualizerFile": "${workspaceFolder}/platform/windows/godot.natvis",
"preLaunchTask": "build"
}
]
}
c_cpp_properties.json
{
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Win32",
"includePath": [
"${workspaceFolder}/**",
"${workspaceFolder}/platform/windows"
],
"defines": [
"_DEBUG",
"UNICODE",
"_UNICODE",
"TOOLS_ENABLED",
"DEBUG_ENABLED",
"TESTS_ENABLED"
],
"windowsSdkVersion": "10.0.22621.0",
"compilerPath":
"compilerPath": "full/path/to/scoop\\apps\\mingw\\current\\bin\\gcc.exe",
"cStandard": "c17",
"cppStandard": "gnu++17",
"intelliSenseMode": "windows-gcc-x64"
}
],
"version": 4
}