Trying to build from source as module but fail completely!

Bbitsalive · 20 сен 2023

Hey there!
Another Unity-refugee here who needs Spine in Godot! :-)

Quick question though.
I understand that - to use Spine - I need to build the Spine runtime module manually with the Godot Source. So far so good - I'm used to that from Unreal times with plugins.

I would prefer not to use the premade build scripts you provide, but rather copy the spine-runtime source into the Godot modules folder and build from there.
I might need other modules as well, so it would be great to just copy whatever I need into the modules folder manually.

I get tons of compilations errors that way though.

I copied the "spine-godot/spine-godot" folder (that contains the config.py) from the repo to "godot/modules".
Then start the build with scons -> errors.
Since you also copy the "spine-cpp" in the build.sh scripts, I tried that as well.
Copied "spine-cpp" to "godot/modules/spine-godot" and recompiled with scons -> errors.

What am I missing here?
Can you give me a hint what goes where?

Thanks in advance!

SSilverStraw · 20 сен 2023

bitsalive Spine-Godot module is structured backwards in the directory tree. Official Godot wants modules to be inside the directory like "godot/modules/spine-godot" but the Spine module is structured outside the Godot's directory tree as "parent_folder/spine-godot" while Godot directory is inside "parent_folder/godot". When you run SCons CLI you would use the custom module parameters as custom_modules="../spine_godot" to include the Spine-Godot module.

Bbitsalive · 21 сен 2023

Alright thank you!
But... why? Why not stick to the official way?

If there was another module who'd do it the same way like the Spine module, you're basically screwed.
Is there any way to make it work the other way around?
Or is this on the roadmap?

Mario · 21 сен 2023

First of all, there is absolutely no reason to build Godot yourself. Simply pick a build from our spine-godot documentation:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-godot

Secondly, there's no "official" way to do Godot engine modules. We need to keep it outside the Godot source tree so we can actually have it snuggly sitting in our spine-runtimes repository, without having to pull in all of Godot as well.

This is a common thing for 3rd party modules, and I posit that it's the only sane way to do it. There's a reason the Godot build system has the custom_modules flag which allows you to pull in directories outside the Godot source tree.

We've written extensive documentation on how to compile Godot with the spine-godot runtime yourself, if you absolutely need to do that (you don't, download it from our site):
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-godot#Compiling-the-Godot-editor-and-export-templates-from-source

If you still want to compile things yourself, you will also have to compile export templates for the platforms you support. That's a major pain, as you need to setup build infra for those platforms. E.g. you can not cross-compile for macOS and iOS from Windows or Linux. We've thus also provided a GitHub workflow, which lets you build everything on GitHub, using their build runners for all operating systems. This is also documented in the documentation.

Bbitsalive · 21 сен 2023

Hi Mario!
Thanks for clearing that up!

Then I'll just pick the version you precompiled! Sorry, I'm pretty new to all this, so this is really helpfull.

One question still, though:
We are building games for consoles as well, so we plan to go with W4Games (https://w4games.com/) console middleware implementation of Godot when the time comes / when it's ready.
Will we run into troubles using Spine / a custom Spine-Godot build down the road?
Will you be able to provide "tempaltes" for consoles as well then, so we can compile the project for consoles with Spine support? Or how would this work?

Just gotta make sure everything works smooth and as planned with our transition to Godot :-)

Mario · 21 сен 2023

Our plan is to switch away from providing our own Godot build and instead providing a GDExtension for Godot 4.1+. I've not yet started work on that, but from what I gather, this shouldn't be too hard, as our current module will likely "just work" as a GDExtension save for some header file path changes.

This should allow you to use spine-godot with whatever W4Games provides for console support. As we do not know what W4Games actually will offer, I can obviously not give any guarantees from our end. Please consult with them what their plan for GDExtensions on consoles is.

Bbitsalive · 21 сен 2023

Ah! This sounds awesome!
Again, thank you for the quick support and answers!

Looking forward to the GDExtension!