We're targeting .NET 5 for now to make development easier while
.NET 6 is not yet released.
TEMPORARY REGRESSIONS
---------------------
Assembly unloading is not implemented yet. As such, many Godot
resources are leaked at exit. This will be re-implemented later
together with assembly hot-reloading.
The main focus here was to remove the majority of code that relied on
Mono's embedding APIs, specially the reflection APIs. The embedding
APIs we still use are the bare minimum we need for things to work.
A lot of code was moved to C#. We no longer deal with any managed
objects (`MonoObject*`, and such) in native code, and all marshaling
is done in C#.
The reason for restructuring the code and move away from embedding APIs
is that once we move to .NET Core, we will be limited by the much more
minimal .NET hosting.
PERFORMANCE REGRESSIONS
-----------------------
Some parts of the code were written with little to no concern about
performance. This includes code that calls into script methods and
accesses script fields, properties and events.
The reason for this is that all of that will be moved to source
generators, so any work prior to that would be a waste of time.
DISABLED FEATURES
-----------------
Some code was removed as it no longer makes sense (or won't make sense
in the future).
Other parts were commented out with `#if 0`s and TODO warnings because
it doesn't make much sense to work on them yet as those parts will
change heavily when we switch to .NET Core but also when we start
introducing source generators.
As such, the following features were disabled temporarily:
- Assembly-reloading (will be done with ALCs in .NET Core).
- Properties/fields exports and script method listing (will be
handled by source generators in the future).
- Exception logging in the editor and stack info for errors.
- Exporting games.
- Building of C# projects. We no longer copy the Godot API assemblies
to the project directory, so MSBuild won't be able to find them. The
idea is to turn them into NuGet packages in the future, which could
also be obtained from local NuGet sources during development.
We will be progressively moving most code to C#.
The plan is to only use Mono's embedding APIs to set things at launch.
This will make it much easier to later support CoreCLR too which
doesn't have rich embedding APIs.
Additionally the code in C# is more maintainable and makes it easier
to implement new features, e.g.: runtime codegen which we could use to
avoid using reflection for marshaling everytime a field, property or
method is accessed.
SOME NOTES ON INTEROP
We make the same assumptions as GDNative about the size of the Godot
structures we use. We take it a bit further by also assuming the layout
of fields in some cases, which is riskier but let's us squeeze out some
performance by avoiding unnecessary managed to native calls.
Code that deals with native structs is less safe than before as there's
no RAII and copy constructors in C#. It's like using the GDNative C API
directly. One has to take special care to free values they own.
Perhaps we could use roslyn analyzers to check this, but I don't know
any that uses attributes to determine what's owned or borrowed.
As to why we maily use pointers for native structs instead of ref/out:
- AFAIK (and confirmed with a benchmark) ref/out are pinned
during P/Invoke calls and that has a cost.
- Native struct fields can't be ref/out in the first place.
- A `using` local can't be passed as ref/out, only `in`. Calling a
method or property on an `in` value makes a silent copy, so we want
to avoid `in`.
REGARDING THE BUILD SYSTEM
There's no longer a `mono_glue=yes/no` SCons options. We no longer
need to build with `mono_glue=no`, generate the glue and then build
again with `mono_glue=yes`. We build only once and generate the glue
(which is in C# now).
However, SCons no longer builds the C# projects for us. Instead one
must run `build_assemblies.py`, e.g.:
```sh
%godot_src_root%/modules/mono/build_scripts/build_assemblies.py \
--godot-output-dir=%godot_src_root%/bin \
--godot-target=release_debug`
```
We could turn this into a custom build target, but I don't know how
to do that with SCons (it's possible with Meson).
OTHER NOTES
Most of the moved code doesn't follow the C# naming convention and
still has the word Mono in the names despite no longer dealing with
Mono's embedding APIs. This is just temporary while transitioning,
to make it easier to understand what was moved where.
- Move the "sync" property for RPCs to RPCConfig.
- Unify GDScript annotations into a single one:
- `@rpc(master)` # default
- `@rpc(puppet)`
- `@rpc(any)` # former `@remote`
- Implement three additional `@rpc` options:
- The second parameter is the "sync" option (which also calls the
function locally when RPCing). One of "sync", "nosync".
- The third parameter is the transfer mode (reliable, unreliable,
ordered).
- The third parameter is the channel (unused for now).
* The harcoded 8 slots are no more and impose limits in the new extension system.
* New system is limitless, although it will impose small performance hit with a mutex.
* Use a token to request the instance binding.
**Warning**: Mono will most likely break as a result of this, will need to be modified to use the new system.
- Fix C++ compile errors about pending variable renames after the `Reference` to `RefCount` change.
- Fix C# compile errors due to the recent rename of `EnablePlugin()` and `Build()`, which are now underscore-prefixed in bindings.
- Additional rename: `godot_icall_Reference_Dtor` to `godot_icall_RefCounted_Dtor`.
In this PR:
- Removed rset
- rpc_config can now optionally configure transfer mode
(reliable/unreliable/ordered) and channel (channels are not actually
implemented yet.)
- Refactor how the RPC id is computed to minimize the logic in Node and
scripts that now only needs a single `get_rpc_methods` function.
The current code style guidelines forbid the use of `auto`.
Some uses of `auto` are still present, such as in UWP code (which
can't be currently tested) and macros (where removing `auto` isn't
easy).
This source generator adds a newly introduced attribute,
`ScriptPath` to all classes that:
- Are top-level classes (not inner/nested).
- Have the `partial` modifier.
- Inherit `Godot.Object`.
- The class name matches the file name.
A build error is thrown if the generator finds a class that meets these
conditions but is not declared `partial`, unless the class is annotated
with the `DisableGodotGenerators` attribute.
We also generate an `AssemblyHasScripts` assembly attribute which Godot
uses to get all the script classes in the assembly, eliminating the need
for Godot to search them. We can also avoid searching in assemblies that
don't have this attribute. This will be good for performance in the
future once we support multiple assemblies with Godot script classes.
This is an example of what the generated code looks like:
```
using Godot;
namespace Foo {
[ScriptPathAttribute("res://Player.cs")]
// Multiple partial declarations are allowed
[ScriptPathAttribute("res://Foo/Player.cs")]
partial class Player {}
}
[assembly:AssemblyHasScripts(new System.Type[] { typeof(Foo.Player) })]
```
The new attributes replace script metadata which we were generating by
determining the namespace of script classes with a very simple parser.
This fixes several issues with the old approach related to parser
errors and conditional compilation.
It also makes the task part of the MSBuild project build, rather than
a separate step executed by the Godot editor.
-Added a new method in Resource: reset_state , used for reloading the same resource from disk
-Added a new cache mode "replace" in ResourceLoader, which reuses existing loaded sub-resources but resets their data from disk (or replaces them if they chaged type)
-Because the correct sub-resource paths are always loaded now, this fixes bugs with subresource folding or subresource ordering when saving.
Happy new year to the wonderful Godot community!
2020 has been a tough year for most of us personally, but a good year for
Godot development nonetheless with a huge amount of work done towards Godot
4.0 and great improvements backported to the long-lived 3.2 branch.
We've had close to 400 contributors to engine code this year, authoring near
7,000 commit! (And that's only for the `master` branch and for the engine code,
there's a lot more when counting docs, demos and other first-party repos.)
Here's to a great year 2021 for all Godot users 🎆
The underscore prefix was used to avoid the conflict between the `RID` class
name and the matching enum value in `Variant::Type`.
This can be fixed differently by prefixing uses of the `RID` class in `Variant`
with the scope resolution operator, as done already for `AABB`.
Removes code duplication between `CSharpScript::reload()` and `CSharpScript::initialize_for_managed_type()`.
Removes a redundant `CSharpScript::update_exports()` call in `CSharpLanguage::reload_assemblies()` as `CSharpScript::reload()` already calls it when appropriate.
Fixes missing update of RPC information in `CSharpScript::initialize_for_managed_type()`.
Godot.NET.Sdk
-------------
Godot uses its own custom MSBuild Sdk for game
projects. This new Sdk adds its own functionality
on top of 'Microsoft.NET.Sdk'.
The new Sdk is resolved from the NuGet package.
All the default boilerplate was moved from game
projects to the Sdk. The default csproj for
game project can now be as simple as:
```
<Project Sdk="Godot.NET.Sdk/4.0.0-dev2">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFramework>netstandard2.1</TargetFramework>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
```
Source files are included by automatically so
Godot no longer needs to keep the csproj in sync
when creating new source files.
Define constants
----------------
Godot defines a list of constants for conditional
compilation. When exporting games, this list also
included engine 'features' and platform 'bits'.
There were a few problems with that:
- The 'features' constants were only defined when
exporting games. Not when building the game for
running in the editor player.
- If the project was built externally by an IDE,
the constants wouldn't be defined at all.
The new Sdk assigns default values to these
constants when not built from the Godot editor,
i.e.: when built from an IDE or from the command
line. The default define constants are determined
from the system MSBuild is running on.
However, it's not possible for MSBuild to
determine the set of supported engine features.
It's also not possible to determine if a project
is being built to run on a 32-bit or 64-bit
Godot executable.
As such the 'features' and 'bits' constants had
to be removed.
The benefit of checking those at compile time
was questionable, and they can still be checked
at runtime.
The new list of define constants includes:
- GODOT
- GODOT_<PLATFORM>
Defaults to the platform MSBuild is running on.
- GODOT_<PC/MOBILE/WEB>
- TOOLS
When building with the 'Debug' configuration
(editor and editor player).
- GODOT_REAL_T_IS_DOUBLE
Not defined by default unless $(GodotRealTIsDouble)
is overriden to be 'true'.
.NET Standard
-------------
The target framework of game projects was changed
to 'netstandard2.1'.
In general they are more confusing to users because they expect
inheritance to fully override parent methods. This behavior can be
enabled by script writers using a simple super() call.
