GDExtension with compiled native C++ binaries

[FibreFoX]

Right now there is no way to properly publish a GDExtension project. This makes it very hard to get visibility through the built-in asset library and impossible to provide awesome features for new game developers.

What makes a GDExtension project different than a normal asset project:

• has to be compiled for each Godot version
• has to be compiled for each supporting platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS, ...)
• GitHub project source code does not contain generated binaries
• might contain other generated files (like supported version strings in the .gdextension-file)

Places I've looked for an existing answer:

• the issues from this (godot-asset-library) project
• https://godotforums.org/?q=gdextension%20library%20is%3Asolved
• https://forum.godotengine.org/search?q=gdextension%20library

Right now the instructions (https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/community/asset_library/submitting_to_assetlib.html) do not provide any suggestion how to handle this.

Not sure if this is a duplicate of #109 , because the scope of that issue is a different one (multiple OS) and does not contain the "support multiple godot-versions out of the same project". Not sure if #140 would make this available.

For what I want is to be able to register a project, configure multiple godot-versions and multiple platforms, which then gets taken from a GitHub-release. Using GitHub Actions workflows makes it very easy (and reproducable) to generate these compiled binaries, so reusing them seems appropiate, and removes the need for users to do any compilation step themselves.

[Calinou]

See #156 for supporting multiple Godot versions. Note that GDExtension has some forwards-compatibility available if you target an old Godot version (the minimum Godot version specified in the .gdextension file must match the godot-cpp version used, still).

The recommended say to publish a
GDExtension is to use the Custom download provider, and link to a published GitHub Release download containing the add-on's source code and libraries for all supported platforms. This way, a single download provides everything needed for users. Generating this download can be automated using GitHub Actions.

The Godot XR add-ons are packaged this way.