This document describes how to build Unreal Engine natively on a Linux host. The steps are described here are applicable to the current build, but you may want to visit https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Building_On_Linux for the latest updates on the process.
If you are stuck at some point, we suggest searching AnswerHub (https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/topics/linux.html) for possible answers or asking a new question on there if you can not find what you are looking for. You may also receive help on #UE4Linux IRC channel on FreeNode, however it is not an official support outlet.
The packages that are required to build the engine vary from distribution to distribution, and an up-to-date list should be maintained (and installed) by Setup.sh - feel free to suggest modifications. Automated install generally works for Ubuntu only.
Most important dependencies:
- mono 3.x (2.x may work, but is not recommended), including xbuild and C# compiler (*mcs), and libraries for NET 4.0 framework.
- clang 3.9.0 (clang 3.5 through 3.8 should also be able to compile the engine).
You will also need at least 20 GB of free disk space and a relatively powerful machine.
If you want to rebuild third-party dependencies (we don't recommend doing that any more), you will need many more development packages installed. Refer to BuildThirdParty.sh script and specific automake/CMake scripts for each dependency. You don't have to do that though as we supply prebuilt libraries.
Setup has been simplified since the previous releases, and the additional binary files which are too large to be included into github repository are now being downloaded by GitDependencies tool with minimal hassle. After cloning the repository, you will need to run Setup.sh script which will invoke the said tool to download them. The tool will be registered as a post-merge hook, so later updates to binary files will be downloaded after each git pull.
How to set up the sources for building, step by step:
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Clone EpicGames/UnrealEngine repository
git clone https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine -b release -
Run Setup.sh once.
cd UnrealEngine./Setup.shThe script will try to install additional packages (for certain distributions) and download precompiled binaries of third party libraries. It will also build one of the libraries on your system (LinuxNativeDialogs or LND for short).
You should see ** SUCCESS ** message after running this step. If you don't, take a look into BuildThirdParty.log located in Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Linux directory.
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After the successful setup, you can generate makefiles (and CMakelists.txt).
./GenerateProjectFiles.sh
Updating the sources later can be done with git pull. The tool to download binary files will be registered as a post-merge hook by Setup.sh, so third party libraries will be updated automatically (if needed). If you ever need to run it directly, it can be found in Engine/Binaries/DotNET/ directory (GitDependencies.exe, which needs to be invoked through mono).
GenerateProjectFiles.sh produces a number of "project" files, including Makefile, CMakeLists.txt which you can use to import the project in your favorite IDE and qmake project file. Both QtCreator and KDevelop 4.6+ are known to handle the project well (although the latter takes about 3-4 GB of resident RAM to load the project).
The targets match the name of the resulting binary, e.g. UE4Editor-Linux-Debug or UE4Game. You can build them by just typing make in the engine's root folder.
4.8 and later versions have simplified building the editor by providing makefile targets "StandardSet" and "DebugSet", the former being the default. You can now just type
make
to build the editor. Alternatively, build the following targets:
make CrashReportClient ShaderCompileWorker UnrealLightmass UnrealPak UE4Editor
If you intend to develop the editor, you can build a debug configuration of it:
make UE4Editor-Linux-Debug
(note that it will still use development ShaderCompileWorker / UnrealLightmass). This configuration runs much slower.
If you want to rebuild the editor from scatch, you can use
make UE4Editor ARGS="-clean" && make UE4Editor
In order to run it:
cd Engine/Binaries/Linux/
./UE4Editor
Or, if you want to start it with a specific project:
cd Engine/Binaries/Linux/
./UE4Editor "~/Documents/Unreal Projects/MyProject/MyProject.uproject"
You can also append -game if you want to run the project as a game (you can also do that from the running editor).
Depending on mono version and some other not yet clarified circumstances (this may be relevant: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13859467/ravendb-client-onlinux-connecting-to-windows-server-using-mono-http), binary downloader tool invoked by Setup.sh may fail. In that case, Setup.sh will keep re-running it until it succeeds (or at least stops crashing). You may want to keep an eye on this as there is a slight possibility of the script getting stuck in an infinite loop if the tool keeps crashing.
On the first start, the editor will be "compiling shaders" (a bit misleading terminology, it will be converting them to GLSL). The result will be stored in Engine/DerivedDataCache folder and used for subsequent runs.
Depending on the project, the editor may need rather large number of file handles (e.g. 16000+). If you start seeing errors about not being able to open files, you may need to adjust your limits.
It is advised that you install the editor on a case insensitive filesystem if you intend to open projects from other systems (OS X and Windows), or Marketplace. JFS formatted with -O option seems to be the best solution.
The time it takes to build the editor in development configuration can be large, debug configuration takes about 2/3 of this time. The build process can also take significant amount of RAM (roughly 1GB per core).
It is also possible to cross-compile the editor (currently from Windows only). You may use this route if your Windows machine happens to be more powerful, but explanation of it is beyond the scope of this document.