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Building an Unreal Engine plugin

UET can build Unreal Engine plugins using just the .uplugin file. For a more complete list of options, use uet build --help.

Building a plugin​

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You must always specify an engine version when building a plugin, as UET can not infer an engine version from a .uplugin file.

... using an installed engine version​

You can build a plugin using a specific version of Unreal Engine installed through the Epic Games Launcher with:

uet build -e 5.3

... using an engine from a specific path​

You can build a plugin using an Unreal Engine located a path on your computer with:

uet build -e C:\Work\UE5

This can be a path to either a source engine (e.g. cloned from GitHub or Perforce), or an installed engine build that has been copied to that directory.

... using an engine from a UEFS package tag​

You can build a plugin using Unreal Engine stored in a UEFS package with:

uet build -e uefs:container.registry.com/package/unreal-engine:tag

Advanced options for building plugins​

uet build provides additional options to configure the way that a plugin is built. These options can be used in addition to the engine specification above.

... for a plugin that is not located in the current directory​

If the plugin is not located in the current working directory, you can specify the path to the folder that contains the .uplugin file with:

uet build -p C:\Path\That\Contains\Plugin

... for the Shipping configuration​

By default uet build will build the plugin in Development configuration. You can build for Shipping instead with:

uet build --shipping

... for additional platforms​

By default uet build will build the plugin for the host platform. You can build for additional platforms by specifying --platform one or more times, for example:

uet build --platform Android --platform Linux

... for distribution on the Marketplace​

By default the plugin will not be packaged for distribution. You can package the plugin for Marketplace distribution with:

uet build --plugin-package marketplace

... for distribution outside the Marketplace​

You can package the plugin for distribution outside of the Marketplace (i.e. including the binaries in the resulting package) with:

uet build --plugin-package redistributable

... with a specific plugin version specified​

By default uet build will infer the plugin version for packaging based on the current time. You can override the version that is set in the resulting package with:

uet build --plugin-version-name MyVersionNumber --plugin-version-number 10000

These options only have an effect when used with --plugin-package. Refer to uet build --help on how the plugin versions are inferred under various scenarios.

... with strict includes enabled​

To ensure all #include declarations are correct in your plugin, you can turn on strict includes. This will significantly increase the build time:

uet build --strict-includes