Making custom export templates (with some disabled features) more accessible

[lostminds]

For a long time it's been possible to compile your own custom export templates to suit specific needs, with a lot of different customization options. In addition to this each official Godot release comes with a package of pre-compiled export templates (release and debug) for each platform that can be downloaded automatically.

However, the step between using these pre-compiled export templates and building custom ones is currently quite big. So big in fact that I'm guessing the vast majority of Godot users will never even attempt to make custom export templates. Which means that I think most Godot users are missing out on the potential benefits of using custom export templates for their projects.

More specifically I'm thinking about using export templates with unused features removed (for example disable_3d for any 2d-only projects, or the recent additions godotengine/godot#104811 and godotengine/godot#103373 if you've got a project with no physics or navigation).

I'm not sure if the performance gains would be more than marginal in these cases, but at least it should help with file size and startup times to not include these modules if they're not going to be used. The fact that the work has been put in to make it possible to remove them indicates that there should at least be some substantial benefit to doing it. Maybe someone else here can provide more detailed information about these potential benefits?

If this does provide a substantial benefit, how could we make these sorts of customized export templates more accessible to more Godot users? Maybe pre-compile and publish a couple more template versions automatically (like a 2D only or No physics version for example) somewhere? Or set up some tool/server where it will be easier for users to configure what features they want enabled/disabled in a GUI and then have that generate export templates without needing to get the code and set up the build environment locally?

[Calinou]

I'm not sure if the performance gains would be more than marginal in these cases, but at least it should help with file size and startup times to not include these modules if they're not going to be used. The fact that the work has been put in to make it possible to remove them indicates that there should at least be some substantial benefit to doing it. Maybe someone else here can provide more detailed information about these potential benefits?

While binary size will improve on all platforms, this is most sought after for mobile and web export templates where small download sizes are critical. Startup times will improve on the web platform, but they aren't really affected elsewhere (maybe slightly on low-end mobile).

If this does provide a substantial benefit, how could we make these sorts of customized export templates more accessible to more Godot users? Maybe pre-compile and publish a couple more template versions automatically (like a 2D only or No physics version for example) somewhere? Or set up some tool/server where it will be easier for users to configure what features they want enabled/disabled in a GUI and then have that generate export templates without needing to get the code and set up the build environment locally?

It has been discussed that we could offer 2D-only export templates for mobile and web platforms, but this is a significant effort to present from an UI perspective, similar to #647. We also have to be careful about not making the build matrix explode in size, which would greatly increase the time it takes for new builds to be produced (including pre-releases). See also #5610.

[AThousandShips]

It's also important to consider that a lot of people who might use custom templates are likely also using encryption which already requires you to compile yourself, so it'd be important to gauge how many would actually use these

My hunch is that most people who would possibly use these are likely already going to build their own templates, not just because they aren't available officially, I'm unsure how many users this would actually reach

[lostminds]

Right, I see. Then perhaps this is not something worth prioritizing, if the main benefits would be (relatively small) size gains. And it's a good point regarding encrypted build templates. These I guess suffer from the same accessibility issue, but might motivate users to do it and then use other custom settings as well.

From a UI/UX perspective I think ideally these things should be options in the export settings, where you could enable/disable what engine functionality should be included in the export so that users wouldn't have to manage export templates at all in the normal case.

[AThousandShips]

You can already deal with export features and get compile arguments from the engine, but it would be difficult to pick between the templates based on specific changes, that would be best done using custom suffixes on your templates and selecting for them

But I'd say you're not likely to use different templates for a single project, so that'd be handled more directly, with selecting the specific template

But I don't know how this would work, other than detecting suffixes, as there's already functionality to select the build profile etc.