Change assembly compile order to compile proto auto-generated code before the rest

Unity Engine
1

Hi there! We have a very big project and we are implementing protobuf for communication with an external app.

We have a system that download the proto client for your machine, download the definitions and generate the code necessary for that protos.

We are not pushing the generated code to our repo so we need to do that step at compilation time.

This work great when we are switching branches. However, when you open the project the first time since unity enters in Safe mode ( because the auto-generated code hasn’t been generated, so the classes that points to that code gives errors because the classes doesn’t exist yet) , it doesn’t compile so it doesn’t gives any callback.

So I have no way to detect that and generated the classes before compiles those assemblies.

Is any way to have a callback before the compilation or when entering safe mode or some way to overcome this?

I am using this code

   [InitializeOnLoad]
    public class ProtobufEditor : AssetPostprocessor
    {
        static ProtobufEditor()
        {
            CompilationPipeline.compilationStarted += OnProjectCompile;
            CompilationPipeline.assemblyCompilationStarted += OnProjectCompile;
            OnProjectCompile();
        }
2

You want a script that will execute before compilation when starting. That’s always going to be difficult because you will need the script to still be compiled first which means the project first needs to compile without errors.
Why don’t you push the code to your repro? Could you add some empty code that represents protobuf, that at least lets it compile and then swap that out for the real thing after startup?

Alternatively, you could do something like:

#if PROTOBUF
// some code that needs protobuf
#endif

Keep all of the code that needs the missing assembly behind the #if so that you can still compile.
Now set this define in the player settings after you have imported protobuf.

1 Like
3

Thank you very much for your answer!

We will end pushing the code to the repo.
Usually, push generated code to repo is not a good practice but I think that in this case it will work correctly.

The empty code can do the trick but I think it is an overengineer option and the define will mesh up all the code.