How to use the Standard Library in a Marketplace plugin?

Development Pipeline & Plugins Plugins
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1

Hi, I need to use a 3rd party lib in a plugin I’m making for the marketplace. This lib makes use of the Standard Library and I’m wandering what the best strategy for including it is.

The lib will only be used in the editor, so should I?

  1. Include the lib as source, using STL is fine in this case.

  2. Only link to compiled libs (not ideal due to potential cross platform / compiler issues)

  3. Refactor the lib to replace the use of STL with Unreal types

Thanks!

2

Since it’s editor-only, it will only ever be built on desktop platforms, which makes the cross platform issues less severe. Still, 1 is probably the easiest assuming the 3rd party license permits it. That way UBT will be building the library source and you don’t need to worry about matching up compiler settings. Having said that, depending on how the library was written, you could encounter problems just dropping in the source and building with UBT. But I’d try that route first.

Of course, 3 works but depending on the size of the library (and again license constraints) it may not be possible/practical.

3

thanks for your reply! but id still like to see an official response to this from Epic