ueversionator

ueversionator is a tool to download custom engine builds based on a uproject's EngineAssociation key. Once downloaded, the engine is extracted to a user specified base folder and registered for use.

Builds are expected to be archived with 7zip, and both an engine and symbols archive are supported.

ueversionator is expected to be at the root level of your game project, i.e. with the .uproject file.

Usage examples

Examples on how to use/run ueversionator are provided in the examples/ folder.

Command line options

Usage of ueversionator:
  -assume-valid
        assumes current archive is valid, if present
  -basedir string
        base directory to download engine bundles in (default "ue4")
  -bundle string
        request UE build bundle (default "editor")
  -config string
        ueversionator config file (default ".ueversionator")
  -ue5
        UE5 build compat
  -user-config string
        ueversionator user config file (default ".uev-user")
  -virgin
        ask configuration options like the first time
  -with-symbols
        include UE engine debug symbols

Configuring ueversionator

uproject association

A UE uproject file's EngineAssociation key needs to be modified with a uev: prefix, followed by the version of the custom build.

{
    "FileVersion": 3,
    "EngineAssociation": "uev:4.24-custom",
    "Category": "",
    "Description": "",
    "Modules": [
        ...
    ],
    ...
}

ueversionator config

A simple configuration file is used to tell ueversionator where to fetch builds from.

[ueversionator]
baseurl = https://downloads.example.com/builds

ueversionator expects builds to be found under this location, with the filename bundlename-<version>.7z, where the version matches the EngineAssociation key without the uev: prefix. So for the uproject example above, the build would be expected to be found at https://downloads.example.com/builds/engine-4.24-custom.7z.

If --with-symbols is used, a debugging symbols archive is expected to be found with the filename bundlename-symbols-<version>.7z.

Example engine build

We create our custom builds and archive them with the following commands:

# Build Unreal Engine
.\Engine\Build\BatchFiles\RunUAT.bat BuildGraph -Target="Make Installed Build Win64" -Script="Engine/Build/InstalledEngineBuild.xml" -Set:WithDDC=true -Set:HostPlatformEditorOnly=true -Set:WithFeaturePacks=false

# Create archive without debugging symbols
7za.exe a -bsp1 -mx9 -md512m -mfb273 -mlc4 -mmt4 "editor-%VERSION%.7z" "Engine\" "-xr!*.pdb"

# Create archive with debugging symbols
7za.exe a -bsp1 -mx9 -md512m -mfb273 -mlc4 -mmt8 "editor-symbols-%VERSION%.7z" "Engine\**\*.pdb" -r