DEV Community: dreamcodestudio

The secret to publishing UPM package to the Asset Store

dreamcodestudio — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:13:30 +0000

📘 Unity native solution

In 2018, Unity's developers released a centralized repository for iterative updates to their Editor engine and extensions called UPM - Unity Package Manager.

Later, third-party services appeared through which UPM packages were distributed:

Separately, NuGetForUnity can be highlighted, which runs the NuGet client within the Unity editor.

Despite this, more than 93 thousand assets and extensions have been published on the Asset Store, but it does not officially offer UPM package downloading functionality.

🎯 Seeking a solution

Asset Store Tools v11.3.1, allows you to download assets from the following sources:

From Assets Folder
Pre-exported .unitypackage

Looking through the sources of the Asset Store Tools, we see the experimental functionality wrapped in the

#if UNITY_ASTOOLS_EXPERIMENTAL directive:

The functionality has already been on the Unity side, but it is not available to third-party developers:

Meanwhile, Unity Technologies developers load their own assets in the form of UPM packages:

To achieve a similar result, follow these steps:

1 - Create a draft package using the Unity Publisher Portal:

2 - Add the value UNITY_ASTOOLS_EXPERIMENTAL to Project Settings > Scripting Define Symbols:

3 - After compilation is complete, select the option to load the local UPM package and specify the package path:

4 - Click the Upload button and 🎉:

💻 Conclusion

The type of download using UPM packages is suitable for assets or tools that have version control and configure dependencies between packages.

This results in a uniform asset structure for the Unity Package Registry and Asset Store.

In future Unity releases, it is likely that an open solution will be published for publishers.

🎁 Helpful Links

Guide

Smart Importer

Asset Store Tools

Unity’s Package Manager

Setup Nullable reference type in Unity

dreamcodestudio — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 16:39:13 +0000

🎯 What is Nullable reference type?

Nullable reference type explicitly specifies whether a variable must contain a value or may not.

Key Features

Design-time analysis
Explicit API contracts
Search for potential locations with NullReference

📑 Software requirements

.NET Standard 2.1+
Unity 2021+

📃 How to turn on static analysis

To analyze the individual assemblies

Create a csc.rsp file next to the asmdef:

Add the nullable argument to the contents of csc.rsp:

-nullable:enable

To analyze individual .cs files

Add the #nullable annotation context to the .cs content:

#nullable enable

💻 Migration Guide

What to do with Unity UI bindings and DI Inject attributes?

Explicitly tell the analyzer that you guarantee their assignment and suppress the warnings using the ! null-forgiving operator.

Unity UI example:

[SerializeField] private Image _image = null!;

VContainer DI example:

namespace Sandbox.Domain
{
    private MoveController _moveController = null!;

    [Inject]
    public void Init(MoveController moveController)
    {
        _moveController = moveController;
    }
}

To exclude a separate part of the code from analysis, you can use the following annotation:

#nullable disable

using System;

namespace Sandbox.Server.Responses
{
    [Serializable]
    public class UserResponse
    {
        public int Id;
        public string Name;
    }
}

🎁 Helpful Links

Nullable reference types in Unity

Microsoft guide

Automating publishing Unity packages to npm registry

dreamcodestudio — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 12:24:37 +0000

🎯 Why npmjs registry?

Ready up to Open Source projects
In-box GitHub Actions solution
CLI support
Allows tracking changes history via Unity Package Manager

Generate Access Token in npmjs registry
Select Access Token type
Add npm Access Token to GitHub repository secrets
Config GitHub workflow using a yml template as follows

name: npm

on:
  release:
    types: [published]

jobs:
  publish-npm:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
      packages: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: '20.x'
          registry-url: https://registry.npmjs.org
      - run: npm install --package-lock-only
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm publish
        env:
          NODE_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{secrets.NPM_TOKEN}}
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN}}

🎉 Now GitHub Actions will automatically upload package to npmjs registry

🎁 Sample project

Unity AutoKeystore