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godot-dev

godot-dev is the reusable game development environment. It holds the Godot engine and the C# toolchain together in one isolated Distrobox home.

The environment provides:

  • Fedora 44 in a Distrobox container;
  • the Godot engine, .NET build, pinned in manifests/godot-dev.env;
  • the .NET SDK for C#, pinned in manifests/dotnet-sdk.env;
  • the graphics, input, sound and font libraries the editor needs to open a window;
  • GitHub and build tools;
  • Claude Code, Codex and Grok after bootstrap;
  • an isolated home at ~/.local/share/distrobox-homes/godot-dev.

The repository owns the target framework and the project dependencies through project.godot, .csproj, .sln and related files.

Why the engine does not come from a package

The distribution package is the standard build of Godot, which has no C# support. C# needs the .NET build, which upstream publishes as mono. So bootstrap/godot-dev.sh installs the upstream release, checks it against the SHA-512 digest that manifests/godot-dev.env pins, and unpacks it into the container home. Change the version in the manifest, change the digest with it, and re-run the bootstrap.

Godot 4.7 generates net8.0 projects. The pinned SDK restores the net8.0 reference pack from NuGet on the first build, so the first build of a project needs the network.

Why the SDK does not come from a package either

A repository declares the SDK it needs in global.json, and that pin names a feature band: 10.0.401 is band 4xx, 10.0.111 is band 1xx. Every rollForward policy selects a version equal to or higher than the pin, and none of them moves down a band. Fedora packages band 1xx only, so a repository that pins band 4xx cannot build against dotnet-sdk-10.0 at all.

bootstrap/godot-dev.sh therefore installs the upstream SDK that manifests/dotnet-sdk.env pins, checks it against the published SHA-512 digest, and unpacks it into the container home. ~/.bashrc.d puts it in front of the distribution package, which stays installed as the fallback the container starts with. Change the version in the manifest, change the digest with it, and re-run the bootstrap.

The godot command is a launcher, not a symlink, for the same reason. The editor builds C#, and the host application menu starts it through distrobox-enter, which runs a command without a login shell. The launcher sets DOTNET_ROOT and PATH itself, so the editor and a terminal build with the same SDK.

Install

./install.sh --components godot-dev

Create the container and run the bootstrap directly when needed:

distrobox assemble create --file distrobox/godot-dev.ini
devbox exec godot-dev --cwd ~/projects/dk-devkit -- ./bootstrap/godot-dev.sh

The editor

The bootstrap installs godot as a command inside the container and exports a desktop entry to the host application menu, so the editor starts from the menu or from a shell in the box:

devbox exec godot-dev --cwd ~/projects/my-game -- godot --editor .

The editor draws through the host GPU. Distrobox passes the graphics devices and the display socket through on its own, so nothing here configures them.

Headless runs work the same way, which is what an agent or a CI step uses:

devbox run -- godot --headless --path . --quit
devbox run -- dotnet build

Export templates

An export needs the templates, which are a 1.2G download. The bootstrap reports the step instead of doing it, so an install never pays for it. Install them inside the box, once per engine version:

devbox exec godot-dev --cwd ~/projects/dk-devkit -- bash -c '
  . manifests/godot-dev.env
  tag=$GODOT_VERSION-$GODOT_RELEASE
  file=Godot_v${tag}_${GODOT_FLAVOR}_export_templates.tpz
  curl -fL -o /tmp/$file \
    https://github.com/godotengine/godot/releases/download/$tag/$file
  printf "%s  %s\n" "$GODOT_TEMPLATES_SHA512" "/tmp/$file" | sha512sum -c -
  mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/share/godot/export_templates"
  rm -rf "$HOME/.local/share/godot/export_templates/${GODOT_VERSION}.${GODOT_RELEASE}.${GODOT_FLAVOR}"
  unzip -q /tmp/$file -d /tmp/templates-$tag
  mv /tmp/templates-$tag/templates \
     "$HOME/.local/share/godot/export_templates/${GODOT_VERSION}.${GODOT_RELEASE}.${GODOT_FLAVOR}"
  rm -rf /tmp/$file /tmp/templates-$tag
'

The editor also installs them through Editor > Manage Export Templates, which downloads the same archive.

Routing

The router infers godot-dev from project.godot. That marker is specific: a Godot C# repository also holds a .csproj and a .sln, which are dotnet-dev markers, and a specific marker outranks the general markers of another environment. docs/environments.md describes the tier.

A repository can also declare godot-dev in .devbox.

Verify

./verify.sh --only 21