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This page is up to date for Godot 4.1
. If you still find outdated information, please open an issue.
Compiling with .NET
Requirements
-
You can use
dotnet --info
to check which .NET SDK versions are installed.
Enable the .NET module
Note
C# support for Godot has historically used the Mono runtime instead of the .NET Runtime and internally many things are still named mono
instead of dotnet
or otherwise referred to as mono
.
By default, the .NET module is disabled when building. To enable it, add the option module_mono_enabled=yes
to the SCons command line, while otherwise following the instructions for building the desired Godot binaries.
Generate the glue
Parts of the sources of the managed libraries are generated from the ClassDB. These source files must be generated before building the managed libraries. They can be generated by any .NET-enabled Godot editor binary by running it with the parameters --headless --generate-mono-glue
followed by the path to an output directory. This path must be modules/mono/glue
in the Godot directory:
<godot_binary> --headless --generate-mono-glue modules/mono/glue
This command will tell Godot to generate the C# bindings for the Godot API at modules/mono/glue/GodotSharp/GodotSharp/Generated
, and the C# bindings for the editor tools at modules/mono/glue/GodotSharp/GodotSharpEditor/Generated
. Once these files are generated, you can build Godot’s managed libraries for all the desired targets without having to repeat this process.
<godot_binary>
refers to the editor binary you compiled with the .NET module enabled. Its exact name will differ based on your system and configuration, but should be of the form bin/godot.<platform>.editor.<arch>.mono
, e.g. bin/godot.linuxbsd.editor.x86_64.mono
or bin/godot.windows.editor.x86_32.mono.exe
. Be especially aware of the .mono suffix! If you’ve previously compiled Godot without .NET support, you might have similarly named binaries without this suffix. These binaries can’t be used to generate the .NET glue.
Note
The glue sources must be regenerated every time the ClassDB-registered API changes. That is, for example, when a new method is registered to the scripting API or one of the parameters of such a method changes. Godot will print an error at startup if there is an API mismatch between ClassDB and the glue sources.
Building the managed libraries
Once you have generated the .NET glue, you can build the managed libraries with the build_assemblies.py
script:
./modules/mono/build_scripts/build_assemblies.py --godot-output-dir=./bin
If everything went well, the GodotSharp
directory, containing the managed libraries, should have been created in the bin
directory.
Note
By default, all development builds share a version number, which can cause some issues with caching of the NuGet packages. To solve this issue either use GODOT_VERSION_STATUS
to give every build a unique version or delete GodotNuGetFallbackFolder
after every build to clear the package cache.
Unlike “classical” Godot builds, when building with the .NET module enabled (and depending on the target platform), a data directory may be created both for the editor and for exported projects. This directory is important for proper functioning and must be distributed together with Godot. More details about this directory in Data directory.
Build Platform
Provide the --godot-platform=<platform>
argument to control for which platform specific the libraries are built. Omit this argument to build for the current system.
This currently only controls the inclusion of the support for Visual Studio as an external editor, the libraries are otherwise identical.
NuGet packages
The API assemblies, source generators, and custom MSBuild project SDK are distributed as NuGet packages. This is all transparent to the user, but it can make things complicated during development.
In order to use Godot with a development version of those packages, a local NuGet source must be created where MSBuild can find them. This can be done with the .NET CLI:
dotnet nuget add source ~/MyLocalNugetSource --name MyLocalNugetSource
The Godot NuGet packages must be added to that local source. Additionally, we must make sure there are no other versions of the package in the NuGet cache, as MSBuild may pick one of those instead.
In order to simplify this process, the build_assemblies.py
script provides the following --push-nupkgs-local
option:
./modules/mono/build_scripts/build_assemblies.py --godot-output-dir ./bin --push-nupkgs-local ~/MyLocalNugetSource
This option ensures the packages will be added to the specified local NuGet source and that conflicting versions of the package are removed from the NuGet cache. It’s recommended to always use this option when building the C# solutions during development to avoid mistakes.
Double Precision Support (REAL_T_IS_DOUBLE)
When building Godot with double precision support, i.e. the precision=double
argument for scons, the managed libraries must be adjusted to match by passing the --precision=double
argument:
./modules/mono/build_scripts/build_assemblies.py --godot-output-dir ./bin --push-nupkgs-local ~/MyLocalNugetSource --precision=double
Examples
Example (Windows)
# Build editor binary
scons p=windows target=editor module_mono_enabled=yes
# Build export templates
scons p=windows target=template_debug module_mono_enabled=yes
scons p=windows target=template_release module_mono_enabled=yes
# Generate glue sources
bin/godot.windows.editor.x86_64.mono --generate-mono-glue modules/mono/glue
# Build .NET assemblies
./modules/mono/build_scripts/build_assemblies.py --godot-output-dir=./bin --godot-platform=windows
Example (Linux, *BSD)
# Build editor binary
scons p=linuxbsd target=editor module_mono_enabled=yes
# Build export templates
scons p=linuxbsd target=template_debug module_mono_enabled=yes
scons p=linuxbsd target=template_release module_mono_enabled=yes
# Generate glue sources
bin/godot.linuxbsd.editor.x86_64.mono --generate-mono-glue modules/mono/glue
# Generate binaries
./modules/mono/build_scripts/build_assemblies.py --godot-output-dir=./bin --godot-platform=linuxbsd
Data directory
The data directory is a dependency for Godot binaries built with the .NET module enabled. It contains important files for the correct functioning of Godot. It must be distributed together with the Godot executable.
Editor
The name of the data directory for the Godot editor will always be GodotSharp
. This directory contains an Api
subdirectory with the Godot API assemblies and a Tools
subdirectory with the tools required by the editor, like the GodotTools
assemblies and its dependencies.
On macOS, if the Godot editor is distributed as a bundle, the GodotSharp
directory may be placed in the <bundle_name>.app/Contents/Resources/
directory inside the bundle.
Export templates
The data directory for exported projects is generated by the editor during the export. It is named data_<APPNAME>_<ARCH>
, where <APPNAME>
is the application name as specified in the project setting application/config/name
and <ARCH>
is the current architecture of the export.
In the case of multi-architecture exports multiple such data directories will be generated.
Command-line options
The following is the list of command-line options available when building with the .NET module:
module_mono_enabled\=yes | no
- Build Godot with the .NET module enabled.