Development Environment

Developing for this addon can be a little tricky at first. Its highly recommended that you have a decent amount of experience with Godot and C++ if you plan on contributing.

What you will need

• An IDE, we will discuss Visual Studio Code here but feel free to use others.
• Respective platform build requirements as specified here. If on Windows its recommended to use mingw over Visual Studio. As Visual Studio tends to give very unhelpful error messages. We recommend TDM-GCC for mingw.
• A copy of the latest godot 4.0 stable build and the godot source code.

Setting up VSCode

Recommended Addons

• Microsoft C/C++.
• Clang-Format.
• CS 128 Clang-Tidy.
• Python.

Setup Compilation Tasks

Tasks in VSCode help a lot to quickly rebuild the project. To setup compilation tasks create the file .vscode/tasks.json in the base repo folder. Below is an example config, make sure to replace all [PLACE HOLDERS].

{
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "label": "Build Module",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "scons target=editor debug_symbols=yes custom_modules=${workspaceFolder} compiledb=yes && cp compile_commands.json ${workspaceFolder}/compile_commands.json",
      "problemMatcher": "$msCompile",
      "group": {
        "kind": "build",
        "isDefault": true
      },
      "options": {
          "cwd": "[PATH TO GODOT SOURCE FOLDER]"
        }
    },
    {
      "label": "Build GDExtension",
      "type": "shell",
      "command": "scons target=template_debug debug_symbols=yes",
      "problemMatcher": "$msCompile",
      "group": {
        "kind": "build",
        "isDefault": false
      },
      "options": {
          "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}"
        }
    }
  ]
}

Setup Debugging

For debugging you must have GDB installed. Start be creating the file .vscode/launch.json in the base repo folder. Below is an example config, make sure to replace all [PLACE HOLDERS].

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Module Debug",
      "type": "cppdbg",
      "request": "launch",
      "program": "[PATH TO GODOT SOURCE FOLDER]/bin/godot.[PLATFORM].editor.x86_64",
      "args": [/*"--editor"*/], // Uncomment if you would like to run the editor. Keep in mind debugging the project will not launch in GDP, only the editor its self.
      "stopAtEntry": false,
      "cwd": "[PATH TO MODULE TEST PROJECT]",
      "environment": [],
      "externalConsole": false,
      "MIMode": "gdb",
      "miDebuggerPath": "[PATH TO GDB]",
      "setupCommands": [
          {
              "description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
              "text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
              "ignoreFailures": true
          }
      ]
  },
  {
      "name": "GDExtension Debug",
      "type": "cppdbg",
      "request": "launch",
      "program": "[PATH TO STABLE GODOT 4.0 BUILD]",
      "args": [/*"--editor"*/], // Uncomment if you would like to run the editor. Keep in mind debugging the project will not launch in GDP, only the editor its self.
      "stopAtEntry": false,
      "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}/project",
      "environment": [],
      "externalConsole": false,
      "MIMode": "gdb",
      "miDebuggerPath": "[PATH TO GDB]",
      "setupCommands": [
          {
              "description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
              "text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
              "ignoreFailures": true
          }
      ]
  },
  ]
}

Other Helpful Settings

In the above compilation tasks we tell SCons to build a compile_commands.json file. Which is a universal format for IDE's to see what exact command is needed to compile each file. This will prevent VSCode form having a ton of random include errors since the godot source is outside of the project folder. We need to tell VSCode that his file exists and about godot-cpp includes. To do so create the file .vscode/c_cpp_properties.json in the base repo folder. Below is an example config, make sure to replace all [PLACE HOLDERS].

{
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "[Linux, Win32 or Mac]",
      "includePath": [
          "${workspaceFolder}/**",
          "${workspaceFolder}/external/**",
          "${workspaceFolder}/external/godot-cpp/include/**",
          "${workspaceFolder}/external/godot-cpp/gen/include/**"
      ],
      "defines": [
          // "LAPI_GDEXTENSION"
      ],
      "cStandard": "c17",
      "cppStandard": "c++14",
      "compileCommands": "compile_commands.json"
    }
  ],
  "version": 4
}

Another helpful configuration is associating SCon files with python and enabling format on save. If you enable this make sure you have clang-format and clang-tidy installed and set as the default formatter. To do so create the file .vscode/settings.json in the base repo folder. Below is an example config, make sure to replace all [PLACE HOLDERS].

{
  "editor.formatOnSave": true,
  "files.associations": {
    "SCsub": "python",
    "SConstruct": "python",
    "SConscript": "python",
  }
}

Scripts

We provide several scripts in the scripts folder. Some are meant to be run by actions. But some are also useful locally. All scripts are meant to be ran from the base repo folder.

• clang_format.sh This script will auto format all source files according to the Clang-Format rules.
• clang_format.sh This script checks generic file formatting rules, it works based off the current files staged in git. Not actual files. But will automatically update them (will not stage).
• codespell.sh This script requires codespell to be installed on your system. It will find common spelling mistakes in comments and string and automatically fix them.