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.
While there are still various bugs to solve and features to implement, the C#
support as of Godot 3.4 is fairly mature and already used by a number of users
in production. Now that we default to dotnet CLI as build tool, it also seems
to be more reliable than MSBuild.
The documentation can (and does for the most part) point out some caveats that
users should be aware of, but this info dialog has outlived its intended
purpose.
- 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`.
Main benefits:
- Projects can be built offline. Previously you needed internet
access the first time building to download the packages.
- Changes to packages like Godot.NET.Sdk can be easily tested
before publishing. This was already possible but required
too many manual steps.
- First time builds are a bit faster, as the Sdk package doesn't
need to be downloaded. In practice, the package is very small
so it makes little difference.
Bumped Godot.NET.Sdk to 4.0.0-dev3 in order to enable the
recent changes regarding '.mono/' -> '.godot/mono/'.
- Removed item list that displayed multiple build
configurations launched. Now we only display
the last build that was launched.
- Display build output next to the issues list.
Its visibility can be toggled off/on.
This build output is obtained from the MSBuild
process rather than the MSBuild logger. As such
it displays some MSBuild fatal errors that
previously couldn't be displayed.
- Added a context menu to the issues list with
the option to copy the issue text.
- Replaced the 'Build Project' button in the panel
with a popup menu with the options:
- Build Solution
- Rebuild Solution
- Clean Solution
- The bottom panel button was renamed from 'Mono'
to 'MSBuild' and now display an error/warning icon
if the last build had issues.
Because `Strings OS_OSX::get_name() const` now returns "macOS" (15a9f94346)
The C# GodotTools were still using "OSX" as identifier a few things were borken (e.g. dotnet/msbuild detection).
The editor wasn't clearing the debugger agent
settings properly after a processing a play
request from an IDE. This caused consequent play
attempts to fail if not launched from the IDE,
as the game would still attempt and fail to
connect to the debugger.
The concrete cause: Forgetting to clear the
`GODOT_MONO_DEBUGGER_AGENT` environment variable.
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'.
ToolButton has no redeeming differences with Button;
it's just a Button with the Flat property enabled by default.
Removing it avoids some confusion when creating GUIs.
Existing ToolButtons will be converted to Buttons, but the Flat
property won't be enabled automatically.
This closes https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/1081.
By adding a reference to the 'Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies' nuget
package, we can build projects targeting .NET Framework with the dotnet CLI.
By referencing this package we also don't need to install Mono on Linux/macOS
or .NET Framework on Windows, as the assemblies are taken from the package.
Right now, games only work on devices when exported with FullAOT+Interpreter.
There are some issues left that need to addressed for FullAOT alone. Right now,
it's giving issues with the Godot.NativeCalls static constructor.
Implementation for new Variant types Callable, Signal, StringName.
Added support for PackedInt64Array and PackedFloat64Array.
Add generation of signal members as events, as well as support for
user created signals as events.
NOTE: As of now, raising such events will not emit the signal. As such,
one must use `EmitSignal` instead of raising the event directly.
Removed old ThreadLocal fallback class. It's safe to use thread_local now since
it's supported on all minimum versions of compilers we support.
This will be used for communicating between the Godot editor and external IDEs/editors, for things like opening files, triggering hot-reload and running the game with a debugger attached.
Remove the old API assembly invalidation system. It's pretty simple since now the editor has a hard dependency on the API assemblies and SCons takes care of prebuilding them.
If we fail to load a project's API assembly because it was either missing or outdated, we just copy the prebuilt assemblies to the project and try again. We also do this when creating the solution and before building, just in case the user removed them from the disk after they were loaded.
This way the API assemblies will be always loaded successfully. If they are not, it's a bug.
Also fixed:
- EditorDef was behaving like GlobalDef in GodotTools.
- NullReferenceException because we can't serialize System.WeakReference yet. Use Godot.WeakRef in the mean time.
We need to dispose the GodotSharpExport export plugin before the editor destroys EditorSettings. Otherwise, if the GC disposes it at a later time, EditorExportPlatformAndroid will be freed after EditorSettings already was, and its device polling thread will try to access the EditorSettings singleton, resulting in null dereferencing.
Make the build system automatically build the C# Api assemblies to be shipped with the editor.
Make the editor, editor player and debug export templates use Api assemblies built with debug symbols.
Always run MSBuild to build the editor tools and Api assemblies when building Godot.
Several bugs fixed related to assembly hot reloading and restoring state.
Fix StringExtensions internal calls not being registered correctly, resulting in MissingMethodException.
