MSFS Do you actually use the Project Editor's "Build All"?

[tml]

As far as I see, it has some annoying deficiencies. Like, is there any way to make it include a standalone module .wasm file into the built package? What is "building" a package anyway except just copying files over from PackageSources to Packages/your-package-name and creating the layout.json and manifest.json? But if that is all it is, how can it take so long?

Currently I have to create the modules folder and copy my .wasm there manually, and then update the layout.json. (I use https://github.com/HughesMDflyer4/MSFSLayoutGenerator for that.)

Another silly issue is that it insists on copying *all* files from PackageSources. Including any random temporary files you might have there. Or backup files your editor might have a habit of making. There should be some way to tell it to ignore files with names matching some patterns... (I am an Emacs user and Emacs creates these backup files with a name ending in '~'. But OK, Emacs surely can be configured to put them somewhere else, or not create them at all. Obviously I use version control so I don't really need those anyway for safety.)

A third minor issue is that it complains (in the Console window) about unrecognised folders and files in the top level. It should just silently ignore them IMHO. Or then I should just keep my Blender files, various notes and documents, and Wasm source code in another folder...

Anyway, I wonder, is it actually simpler and faster, and less mysterious steps that you don't really know what they do, if you just work in an already "packaged" directory structure? Not use "Build All" at all?

 

[Senchay]

Well, it does that with many files. Amd it.converts textures to DDS.
Why would you want to manually convert all the textures to dds, generate the json and xml for those, the project files and what not? There are enough steps in a project that give you something to do, are you workaholic? there will be hundreds of items, maybe thousands (some airport have hundreds of textures alone)

How did this question even start to grow on you (not serious questions, don't get it won't pls. I'm kidding.)

I don't know.... I wouldn't want to have blender files and incoming work materials, docs and all that in the project folder. That is strictly separated for me. One folder that has projects and another folder that has the working space.

Btw, you don't have to use the editors build all funktion.
Can be done outside with fspa ckagemanager without the sim started.
Besides that, of course you can manually change things in the xmls and probably one has to at some point. But the SDK clearly states that it's recommend and advised to use the build tools and editor to make changes.

But probably there are other things that happen on a build anyway too.

 

[Anthony31]

I quite often edit sound packages, gauges and .cfg files without rebuilding. The package compiler only copies those files anyway which is why you shouldn't leave temporary files lying about. As far as I know for aircraft the only thing the build package actually makes changes to are the models and textures so if there is any changes to the model or texture then I need to rebuild but anything apart from that is freely editable (unless you add a new file in which case you need to edit the .json file to include it and in that case it's just easier to rebuild).

And use batch files. If you need to repeatedly copy files make a batch file to do it for you.

 

[tml]

And use batch files

Er, no, old Unix guy here, I much prefer to do my command-line work in a Cygwin shell (or Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux shell), use Makefiles, shell scripts etc instead of .bat files. But that is just me

 

[tml]

Why would you want to manually convert all the textures to dds

Hmm, good point, I am not that far yet in my project that I would have had to handle those.

(But as such, I certainly would not do it "manually" separately for each. If I end up not using the Project Editor, I write some Makefiles to automate the work, of course.)