Question How a Plugin Determine If It's Maintained by UPM

Hi everyone:

I'm developing a Unity plugin for editor mode. It's file layout like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. - Assets
2.   - MyPlugin
3.     - Resources
4.       - Image.jpg
5.     - Scripts
6.       - MyScript.cs
7. - Documents

As the layout shows, the plugin needs to load some resources at runtime, for example a image. But if I load the image from

Application.dataPath/Assets/Resources/Image.jpg

, it can only success when developing the plugin. When it is released to git and downloaded by others and maintained by UPM, the file will not found at runtime. That's because data is not under Assets folder but under Packages folder. But if I replace the path to something like

Application.dataPath/Packages/com.mypackage.myplugin/Resources/Image.jpg

, then the image can be loaded when the pacakge is maintained by UPM. But when I develop this plugin, it can't load the image (because the image is not under Packages folder).

So what's the best way to solve this problem?

 

Maybe use a scripting symbol?

#IF MY_PLUGIN_DEVELOPMENT_MODE

path = this path..

#ELSE

path = path for everyone else

 

If you're trying to save/load editor-time data, you should not use the

Resources

folder for that. The content of the resources folders get into the builds.
You should not have

Resources

folder inside your packages. Resources folders are for

Assets/...

and loading from there you should not use path in runtime (and you should avoid duplicate names and such).
See the examples here: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Resources.Load.html they are relative to the

Resources

folder.

And finally: use Addressables instead.

 

I think it's hard to automaticlly change the marco value based on envirenment...

 

Resources under

Resources

folder is just an example case. Another situation is that we may want to load .uxml file, both when we are editing it as a Unity project and after releasing it as a package.

 

Use the GUID of an asset in the root of your plugin folder to get the path from the asset database. This also allows you to place the plugin folder anywhere under Assets, works if you put your plugin in a subdirectory of a Package and doesn't depend on the package name.

Code (CSharp):

1. const string AssetGuid = "1234...";
2.  
3. public static string GetPluginPath()
4. {
5.     var path = AssetDatabase.GUIDToAssetPath(AssetGuid);
6.     return Path.GetDirectoryName(path);
7. }

 

But what if I release the plugin by UPM? In that situation, the asset is not under Asset folder but under Packages folder.

 

What's hard? Just add a checkbox somewhere that adds or removes your flag or something? Seems like an easy way to quickly move forward.

 

All assets are managed by the asset database, those in Assets as well as those in Packages. It'll just return the "Packages/com.yourpackage/Path/to/your/plugin" path if the target file is part of a package. As I wrote, It'll work if the file is in the Assets folder and it'll work if it's inside a package (any kind of package – local, remote or git).