haraldwer / GDExtensionTemplate

A godot template project for working with GDExtension in Visual Studio / Rider in Windows. Includes tools for automatically generating registration code.

GDExtension Template

This template project provides some useful functionality for working with GDExtension in Visual Studio / Rider in Windows.

Features

• A .sln solution with an example .vcxproj project
• Recursive SConstruct file (allowing for cpp files in subfolders)
• One-click IDE compilation
• A pre-compile step that automatically registers classes, members and variables (similar to the unreal UCLASS/UPROPERTY functionality) (WIP)
• Some useful .bat scripts

Prerequsites

• Godot 4 executable
• C++ compiler
• SCons
• .NETFramework v4.8 (older versions might also work)

See Compiling Godot

Setup

• Clone the repository. If the godot-cpp folder is empty, try --recursive when cloning to also get the submodules.
• Copy godot executable to repository folder and rename to godot.exe.
• In your IDE, use ProjectLauncher configuration.

Usage

Some macros exist in reg.h that provide automated registration for classes, functions and properties. Here is how to use them:

• REG_CLASS() - Use this macro instead of GDCLASS().
• REG_FUNCTION() - Put this in front of your function.
• REG_PROPERTY() - Put this in front of your property. Supports PropertyInfo meta parameters.
• REG_ENUM() - Put this in front of your enum.

There is an example class called GDExample that you can use for reference. Registration-code will be injected into extension.cpp. Class bindings will be generated based on reg_class.template.

Known issues / Future work

• The debugger does not attach automatically to the godot process. You can still attach manually.

Notes

• Intellisense / Intellij will only work after first compile.
• The RegAutomation project will compile and run when you compile your c++ code. RegAutomation.exe is responsible for generating the registration code and you can find the resulting files in /source/{project name}/.generated/.
• The .sln and .vcxproj is based on the generated result of running scons platform=windows vsproj=yes in the godot engine repository.
• NMake .sln requires an exe path without parameters. The ProjectLauncher project is a workaround for this.
• I have not yet tested multiple GDExtension projects in the same solution.
• Tested with Rider 2023.2 and Visual Studio Community 2022.

Unit Tests

This section assumes that Visual Studio Community 2022 is being used as the IDE of choice.

Unit tests are implemented in the RegAutomation.Core.Tests project. This project is included in both solution.sln and RegAutomation.sln.

To run unit tests from solution.sln, right click on the RegAutomation.Core.Tests project in the Solution Explorer, and select Run Tests. Do not use Run All Tests in solution.sln, as this will trigger the build process and cause scons to build the C++ project, wasting several minutes before the tests actually get run.

Alternatively, you can run unit tests from RegAutomation.sln instead. This solution does not include ProjectLauncher and the C++ project, so you can just select Test > Run All Tests from the toolbar to run tests without the aforementioned issues.