Parallel Build

Parallel Build is a simple tool to build your project while you continue working on it.

You can provide:

•  A local folder in which you have your Unity project files. Simple, no setup required.
• A git repository of your Unity project. Make sure to have git installed.

Then, after the build has been created you can ask Parallel Build to:

• Copy back the build to your local project. This is useful to keep your builds locally to be distributed afterwards.
• Publish your build to itch.io. This is useful for game jams or projects you host on this website. Make sure to have butler installed and configured.

If you want, you can check Continuous build to never stop building. This works especially well with a git repository, since it will start a new build only if there are new changes.

Then, simply click on Build to start your build! Let Parallel Build do its job, while you can continue creating awesome games!

Use cases

1. You are taking part in a game jam and you are the programmer. You only have one PC and want to be able to provide frequent builds to show everyone else in the team. You can run Parallel Build, either starting builds from time to time or enabling the continuous build, while you continue to develop. (That's basically why I created this tool in the first place, evolving from this.)
2. You are working on a project on git and you have a secondary PC. You can work on your main PC, push the changes, then have Parallel Build running in continuous build mode on your secondary PC to fetch the changes and running builds without you having to worry about it. (I used this approach during one game)

FAQ

• How does it work?
  • For local folders, it simply copies all project files to a temporary folder and runs the build from this cloned project. The temporary folder is removed and recreated between each build.
  • For git repositories, it clones your project inside of a temporary folder. You don't need to have the project on your computer for this to work. Another advantage is that Parallel Build can simply pull the differences and start a new build, without the need to copy again the whole project.
• Is it the right tool for me?
  • This is a very simple and straightforward approach to solve the problem of running a build while you develop. No setup required. But if you need something more professional, I suggest you to use  a CI (like GameCI) or Unity Cloud Build.
• I have my own build script, can I use it?
  • Yes! When you select your build target, besides the basic ones (Windows, MacOS, Linux and WebGL) you can select "Custom" and provide a Build method, which must be a reference to a static method (in the form of ClassName.MethodName or NamespaceName.ClassName.MethodName) of a C# script located inside an Editor folder (such as Assets/Editor/MyBuildScript.cs). Parallel Build will also pass a -buildpath argument with the build path selected, which can be used by the script. For an example of how to extract this value and launch a build, look here.

Troubleshooting and known issues

• On MacOS, Parallel Build can't find butler, even though I have it installed
  • If Parallel Build can't find butler, please make sure it is placed inside of /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to use the user's custom $PATH, so the easiest way to get around this problem is to create a symbolic link to your butler executable, like this: ln -s <your_path>/butler /usr/local/bin/butler
• When I open Unity Hub the cloned projects appear, is it normal?
  • Unfortunately it can happen. Every time you run a Unity build the Unity Hub registers the project, so that happens for the clones too. Parallel Build does its best to remove those references from the Unity Hub, but the may still appear from time to time. You can simply manually remove them or wait for them to disappear after the project is deleted.
    
• It takes forever to stop the build, is it normal?
  • Yes, it takes a while to stop the Unity build process. It is recommended to wait for the build process to end naturally, otherwise some temporary files could be left on you PC.
    
• The build failed, what do I do?
• Parallel Build should output the error message, which should help debug the issue. However, if the problem persists, it is recommended to start the build manually on the main project (especially if it is the first build). Usually when the build fails on Parallel Build it fails on your project too, and there you could have more clear error messages and better feedback.

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The source code is available here: https://github.com/msilvestro/parallel-build