[QUESTION] What is that "Bee"-stuff?

Unity Engine
,
1

Hello everyone.

Working with Unity on openSuse (nearly) since Unity made it to Linux (thanks btw.).

I always tried to stick to the latest official Unity-releases and using the newest openSuse.
Never had any “big” problems.

When Unity made it from 2020 to 2021, it creates a new folder “Library/Bee” in your project.

No problems on Suse 15.2, but updating to 15.3 Unity seems to stop (hang) working by creating or opening projects. Also if I try to migrate projects from older Unity-versions to the latest version (currently 2021.1.10f1). (see Editor log)
Unity 2020.3.12f1 (LTS) works on Suse 15.3.

Part of Editor.log on Suse 15.2:

Starting: /home/phrobion/bin/Unity/2021.1.10f1/Editor/Data/bee_backend --dagfile="Library/Bee/2400b0aE.dag" --profile="Library/Bee/profiler.json" --continue-on-failure --stdin-canary ScriptAssemblies
WorkingDir: /home/phrobion/Unity/Tests/EmptyTestLegacy
ExitCode: 4 Duration: 0s31ms
[     ] Require frontend run.  2400b0aE.dag no longer valid. FileSignature timestamp changed: ../LinuxEditor/Data/ScriptCompilationBuildProgram
Starting: /home/phrobion/bin/Unity/2021.1.10f1/Editor/Data/Tools/netcorerun/netcorerun "/home/phrobion/bin/Unity/2021.1.10f1/Editor/Data/ScriptCompilationBuildProgram/ScriptCompilationBuildProgram.exe" "Library/Bee/2400b0aE.dag.json" "Library/Bee/2400b0aE-inputdata.json"
WorkingDir: /home/phrobion/Unity/Tests/EmptyTestLegacy
ExitCode: 0 Duration: 0s377ms

Starting: /home/phrobion/bin/Unity/2021.1.10f1/Editor/Data/bee_backend --dagfile="Library/Bee/2400b0aE.dag" --profile="Library/Bee/profiler.json" --continue-on-failure --stdin-canary ScriptAssemblies
WorkingDir: /home/phrobion/Unity/Tests/EmptyTestLegacy
ExitCode: 0 Duration: 9s181ms

[to be continued...]

Part of Editor.log on Suse 15.3:

Starting: /home/phrobion/bin/Unity/2021.1.10f1/Editor/Data/bee_backend --dagfile="Library/Bee/2400b0aE.dag" --profile="Library/Bee/profiler.json" --continue-on-failure --stdin-canary ScriptAssemblies
WorkingDir: /home/phrobion/Unity/Tests/EmptyTestLegacy
ExitCode: 4 Duration: 0s31ms
[     ] Require frontend run.  2400b0aE.dag no longer valid. FileSignature timestamp changed: ../LinuxEditor/Data/ScriptCompilationBuildProgram
Starting: /home/phrobion/bin/Unity/2021.1.10f1/Editor/Data/Tools/netcorerun/netcorerun "/home/phrobion/bin/Unity/2021.1.10f1/Editor/Data/ScriptCompilationBuildProgram/ScriptCompilationBuildProgram.exe" "Library/Bee/2400b0aE.dag.json" "Library/Bee/2400b0aE-inputdata.json"
WorkingDir: /home/phrobion/Unity/Tests/EmptyTestLegacy
ExitCode: 0 Duration: 0s377ms

Starting: /home/phrobion/bin/Unity/2021.1.10f1/Editor/Data/bee_backend --dagfile="Library/Bee/2400b0aE.dag" --profile="Library/Bee/profiler.json" --continue-on-failure --stdin-canary ScriptAssemblies
WorkingDir: /home/phrobion/Unity/Tests/EmptyTestLegacy

[Here it stops without any ExitCode]

So here my Question:
What is “bee_backend” doing?
Is there any way to debug, why it hangs here.
Last but not least: What is this “Bee”-stuff- is there any doc about its needs or dependencies?

Thanks in advance

phrobion

2

Same here, unity 2021.2.11f1 (i tried previous versions as well, yes) hangs when opening any project including default ones from templates, and i see bee_backend in tasks, killing the bee_backend causes unity to unfreeze and ask me to enter safe mode.

I’m currently on opensuse tumbleweed, but i also tried it on opensuse leap 15.3 and result was the same.

1 Like
3

Does anyone solve the problem?
I try everything i could for a whole day still showing the same error!
any update i will be appreciated it…

4

Bee is our build backend. Unfortunately, we don’t test on SUSE and it isn’t one of our supported configurations. So I’m not clear what this issue may be.

You may have better luck with 2021.2 as it is the first officially supported Linux Editor release. And if this is something anyone sees under Ubuntu or CentOS 7, please please file a bug!

2 Likes
5

Well, maybe i will test it on supported distros later, but right now i can be sure of one thing, that is, the problem appeared exactly in 2021 branch of Unity that you are suggesting to use, because Unity 2020.3.30f1 works fine on my pc with opensuse. 2021.2 and 2022.1 on the other hand freeze when opening any project.

6

Any updates? Having the same problem here.

7

Any chance you’re hitting Linux editor stuck on loading because of bee_backend w/ workaround ?

2 Likes
8

It did solve my problem, thanks.

9

I didn’t try the workaround, but nice, it seems to work.

Unity made me switch from Suse (me, using since ~2001 or something) to (K)Ubuntu.
Now nearly everthing is working for me out of the box.
I will not return to Suse*, sorry.

I don’t want to wait months for a “workaround”.

*) okay, I am missing Yast.

10

The Bee folder appears to be nearly 5 GBs. Need to send the entire project files to a client, can I delete it while sending? is it something unity can recreate when opening at client end?

cuz otherwise its 5 GBs of upload on a project that should otherwise not even be a few hundred MBs.

11

Yes, you can actually exclude the whole Library folder.

2 Likes
12

WARNING: While this is 100% true, deleting the entire library folder will also delete your shader cache forcing Unity to re-calculate shader variants the next time you build.

If you only use the standard PBR shader a limited number of times this isn’t an issue. If however you have custom and complex shaders written using Shader graph, this will result in builds taking much longer to compile. Our current project results in cached shader builds being only 15mins vs almost 3 hours if the cache isn’t copied along with the repository.

1 Like
13

Do you test on Windows 11 Pro?
Bee appears to be problematic for many people.
I am building for UWP and classic Windows exe, and others on Android have issues with that.

https://discussions.unity.com/t/940413