Developer Workflow

Development
1

Hi again AYON. I just wanted to confirm the developer workflow. So it seems like the workflow would be:

  1. Clone existing Production bundle, mark it as a Dev Bundle.
  2. Set Individual users to Developer mode and source the new Dev Bundle.
  3. Once in Developer Mode you can set local paths for individual addons so you can work with live code
  4. If working on a particular addon we can clone the modules we want to edit from the ynput git repo or I guess from the cloned dev bundle.
  5. Once code changes approved we move/commit changes to the Dev Bundle
  6. Once Dev Bundle reaches a milestone we clone as a Production Bundle for all other users.

Is that very broadly the correct approach?

2

You can add that in order to use the dev bundle, a developer needs to launch the ayon launcher with the --use-dev flag.

EDIT: note that launching actions from the webapp won’t trigger the --use-dev flag, so you would need to open apps from the traypublisher (unless there’s been a recent update I’m not aware of)

You don’t really “clone” the dev bundle, because it may contain local code, so your “cloned bundle” may miss some code. In my case I use the dev bundle to test out modded addons, once those addons are tested, I create new packages for those addons (you can add flags as -dev to the addon’s versions) and I create a bundle with the base of the previous staging bundle, and with the new addons packages. When staging seems stable I push it to prod.

3

Thanks for your reply, all makes sense.

So I have a follow up question as I’ve run into an error.

I’ve created a dev bundle, set my user to development mode, I’ve cloned the addon repo I’m after and then set the path to that in the Dev Bundle settings.

image

I’m then running the Ayon launcher with the --use-dev flag. And it launches as expected. But when I go to launch Unreal I get the following error at the bottom of the launcher window.

“Failed: Path to plugin integration is null!”

Any suggestions to what I’m missing here?

Thanks

4

Development workflow and environment can vary from studio to studio.

However, there are few things that are the same:

  • Customizing an addon, which is discussed in Addon custom update at studios where you typically clone the addon repo, create and maintain your own develop branch.
  • Dev Bundle: Each dev bundle has one assigned dev. I don’t think developers can share the same dev bundle.
  • Staging Bundle: AYON has three modes production, staging and development. staging is mainly for testing new addon features in your studio. More info pipeline modes. one limitation is web actions as explained in this AYON feedback request AYON Server Staging Mode.

As mentioned eariler, the development workflow may vary. so, here are some examples:

Example Development workflow:

  1. Fork any necessary addons on your studio’s GH. (our repos are public, so forks will be public too).
  2. Each developer can clone different ayon addons and start working on implementing features and fixes locally, then they can make PRs to the studio forks.
  3. Create a dev bundle for each developer so that they can point to their local repo clone for each addon.
  4. When PRs are approved, you can create a studio release and upload it to your server.
  5. You can add this addon release to a staging bundle where selected users in your studio can test it.
  6. if all cool, you can add your addon to your production.

Example Development environment setup:

5

Just adding here for the sake of completeness that this particular error:

Failed: Path to plugin integration is null!

happens when you are missing submodules in ayon-unreal repo. You can either clone it with submodules using

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ynput/ayon-unreal.git

or when you already cloned it, just run:

git submodule update --init --recursive

the submodule is actually unreal integration plugin that is used if pre-existing plugin in Unreal Engine isn’t found (manually built or downloaded from FAB)

2 Likes