If you’d like to have your build system submit editor binaries to Perforce for your artists to use, we have an example BuildGraph script in Engine\Build\Graph\Examples\BuildEditorAndTools.xml demonstrating the process of compiling binaries, copying them to a staging directory, and (optionally) submitting them to Perforce.
Example usage and documentation of the various options available using it are shown at the top of the script.
History at Epic
We used to use this deployment method at Epic, but moved away from it for the following reasons:
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Typically, engineers don’t want precompiled binaries because they’re large, often causing slow sync times, which can be particularly painful for off-site developers and remote studios.
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Submitting binaries to a stream that’s inline with the content and engine stream can cause errors caused by having a mix of locally built and non-locally built binaries due to timestamps being updated during a sync. The operating system will fail to find the right imports and exports between the mismatched DLLs.
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If a module is removed, a stale binary can still be submitted to Perforce, and the Engine may still try to load it (for example,
UE4Editor-*ShaderFormat.dll