I’m using the release branch from GitHub on Ubuntu 16.04. I followed the Linux quick start guide successfully. Now I’m looking into setting up my IDE (Atom) for it, and the guide says I have to build UE4 in my IDE. Is there a way to set it up without building again?
So this has been asked before couple times. There are several “fully” supported IDEs that do work on Linux, I do not think that Atom is even considered IDE from that standpoint.
You can of course point your Atom to the project folder and work on the code from there. Install some additions to make your life easier ue4-snippets
This might also help: Atom Support - #5 by looter - Feedback for Unreal Engine team - Unreal Engine Forums
To be honest it is easier to use one of the supported ones, I started using VSCode on Linux and I was using CLion before that(and sometimes still do).
Just a fun fact, there is a way to use emacs/vi with the editor, just a snippet from the PKGBUILD file
# CodeLite (Fully integrated)
# cd $srcdir/UnrealEngine/Engine/Config/Linux && sed -i '10c\PreferredAccessor=CodeLiteSourceCodeAccessor' LinuxEngine.ini
# Qt Creator
# cd $srcdir/UnrealEngine/Engine/Plugins/Developer && git clone https://github.com/fire/QtCreatorSourceCodeAccess
# cd $srcdir/UnrealEngine/Engine/Config/Linux && sed -i '10c\PreferredAccessor=QtCreatorSourceCodeAccessor' LinuxEngine.ini
# VIM or EMACS
# cd $srcdir/UnrealEngine/Engine/Plugins/Developer && git clone https://github.com/fire/SensibleEditorSourceCodeAccess
# cd $srcdir/UnrealEngine/Engine/Config/Linux && sed -i '10c\PreferredAccessor=SensibleEditorSourceCodeAccessor' LinuxEngine.ini