Assembly Builder

What is it? Unity Package, which allows to create parallel hierarchy of .asmdef compilation files. Through this package, you can setup huge amount of .asmdef files. This package is UnityEditor only

Why? With HUGE amount of code, it's necessary to decompose all of this code to separate systems. And one of the best way to do this - with .asmdef files. In this way, you can architect your project with more flexibility and incapsulation of logic. But default interface for .asmdef files is not great for that. This package solve this problem

I have several reasons, why you should use it, instead of default .asmdef

• This is overhead for .asmdef, you still works with .asmdef, but with improvements
• It automates manual linking of many .asmdef files. On default .asmdef, with every new project .asmdef, you must think to link it manually. With this solution - you just need to create AssemblyBuilder and add links to other AssemblyBuilder

How to install it?

• Via UPM (git url) - https://github.com/vertoker/assemblybuilder.git?path=/Assets/AssemblyBuilder
• Via manifest.json - add new line "com.vertoker.assemblybuilder": "https://github.com/vertoker/assemblybuilder.git?path=/Assets/AssemblyBuilder"
• Via git clone (if you want to contribute here) - git clone https://github.com/vertoker/assemblybuilder.git
• Via .zip archive - just download package manually, extract and move to your project into Assets/Plugins concrete folder Assets/AssemblyBuilder

How to work with it?

1. Create new / Select existed .asmdef file
2. Create new AssemblyBuilder asset (Scripting/AssemblyBuilder/...)
3. Add selected .asmdef file into new AssemblyBuilder
4. Add parents into this AssemblyBuilder
5. (optional) Setup inherit mode of this AssemblyBuilder
6. (optional) Add into overall AssemblyBuilderCollection asset
7. Click button Build

Steps 2-3 can be done in one action: select .asmdef files and use Create/Scripting/AssemblyBuilder/AssemblyBuilder from AssemblyDefinition (Shift+Ctrl+F11). It creates AssemblyBuilder near every selected file, with .asmdef file already added

Step 7 can also be done from main menu, without selecting anything in project:

• Tools/AssemblyBuilder/Build All finds every builder in project, detects roots of their hierarchy and builds them. Every builder is built exactly once, so it doesn't matter, how many collections contain it
• Tools/AssemblyBuilder/Build Selected builds only builders selected in project window, same as Build button of inspector

Root is a builder, which no AssemblyBuilderCollection contains, building it covers whole it's branch. parents are not a part of build hierarchy, they only give references, so a parent is still built as it's own root

What you should know

• Use readonly option for builder, which .asmdef files you don't want to change. It's usually files from upm and other external packages in project itself
• Use public parents and private parents to create incapsulation in your inheritance tree. Even .asmdef files must have dependencies, which other .asmdef files should doesn't know about
• Use public parents by default
• Use inherit mode to control depth of inheritance: DeepInherit (default) collects every parent through whole hierarchy, Inherit collects only nearest parents, without parents of parents, NoInherit collects nothing and clears references field
• inherit mode of builder defines only it's own references field. inherit mode of it's parents doesn't affect this builder, so you can safely change it in any asset
• Cyclic parents are not allowed, .asmdef files can't reference each other in a circle. Builder detects it, writes error into console and stops inheritance on this branch, but hierarchy still must be fixed manually
• AssemblyBuilder allows to add several .asmdef files, but recommendation: use unique AssemblyBuilder for every .asmdef file
• AssemblyBuilder also can be used without .asmdef file, in inheritance recursion, it uses as group of other AssemblyBuilder's, just add it into public parents
• AssemblyBuilderCollection can be added into public parents and private parents too. There it works as transparent group: it stands for builders inside it, not for a layer of inheritance, so it gives the same result as adding these builders one by one. Nested collections are unwrapped the same way
• Use several AssemblyBuilderCollection assets, to collect all AssemblyBuilder assets in your project. This allows to setup all dependencies with single Build click. Collections can contain other collections, and one AssemblyBuilder can be added into several of them, it's built only once anyway. Builders Count field shows amount of unique builders inside collection
• At the current moment, it changes only references field in .asmdef files, therefore everything else must be setup manually (but it can be changed)

This package is in development, I open to any MR that you sent to project