Engine does not see gdextension release

YanDaik · April 15, 2026, 11:34pm

Godot Version

Godot 4.6 custom build.

Question

Engine does not see gdextension build dll of release version.

I have several build of the engine. Release and Debug.

Also I have release and debug version of dll.

this is *.gdextension file

[configuration]
entry_symbol = "rim_library_init"
compatibility_minimum = 4.1
reloadable = true

[libraries]


windows.debug.x86_32 = "res://bin/librim.windows.template_debug.dev.x86_32.dll"
windows.release.x86_32 = "res://bin/librim.windows.template_release.x86_32.dll"
							        
windows.debug.x86_64 = "res://bin/librim.windows.template_debug.dev.x86_64.dll"
windows.release.x86_64 = "res://bin/librim.windows.template_release.x86_64.dll"

but no matter what i do. engine does not load librim.windows.template_release.x86_64.dll. It Always loads librim.windows.template_debug.dev.x86_64.dll.

If I delete librim.windows.template_debug.dev.x86_64.dll then it does not load anything and crashes even though the release version is in same folder.

What do I have to do?

normalized · April 15, 2026, 11:51pm

If you’re running the editor or starting the game from the editor, the debug version will always be used. Release version is used in the exported project and if you force it by starting from command line using --release flag.

Note that you can always just assign the release runtime to windows.debug.x86_* in the gdextension file.

enetheru · April 16, 2026, 5:39am

I’ve always found this part frustrating too.
so here’s the way I sort of understand it, godot chooses the most constrained library to attempt loading based on the tags you give it. (there appears to be some automatic detection too but i haven’t read it)

The tags are split and tested against OS::has_feature which checks against a bunch of hard coded tags, and a set of custom tags, which can be added in the debug run configuration as well as the export configuration.
There is a bunch more stuff in there about finding libraries automatically but i haven’t really looked into it that hard.

Once you understand the above, and know where in the source to check the logic, it gets easier to write the exact tags necessary to load any library, or name the library for auto detection.

It’s been a while but i never found a way to extract the list of features from a build, i guess one could create a quick gdscript function with a copy paste of the known features from the source below, among other things.

github.com/godotengine/godot

core/extension/gdextension_library_loader.cpp

3f63a400f


      
          		Vector<String> libraries = p_config->get_section_keys("libraries");
          
          		// Iterate the libraries, finding the best matching tags.
          		String best_library_path;
          		Vector<String> best_library_tags;
          		for (const String &E : libraries) {
          			Vector<String> tags = E.split(".");
          			bool all_tags_met = true;
          			for (int i = 0; i < tags.size(); i++) {
          				String tag = tags[i].strip_edges();
          				if (!p_has_feature(tag)) {
          					all_tags_met = false;
          					break;
          				}
          			}
          
          			if (all_tags_met && tags.size() > best_library_tags.size()) {
          				best_library_path = p_config->get_value("libraries", E);
          				best_library_tags = tags;
          			}
          		}

github.com/godotengine/godot

core/os/os.cpp

3f63a400f


      
          }
          
          String OS::get_processor_name() const {
          	return "";
          }
          
          void OS::set_has_server_feature_callback(HasServerFeatureCallback p_callback) {
          	has_server_feature_callback = p_callback;
          }
          
          bool OS::has_feature(const String &p_feature) {
          	// Feature tags are always lowercase for consistency.
          	if (p_feature == get_identifier()) {
          		return true;
          	}
          
          	if (p_feature == "movie") {
          		return _writing_movie;
          	}
          
          #ifdef DEBUG_ENABLED

YanDaik · April 16, 2026, 10:03am

Tried it just now and it didn’t help.

YanDaik · April 16, 2026, 10:07am

Yeah, i cant test game properly. I have to pack it every time before the test.

enetheru · April 16, 2026, 10:31am

the shared libraries are not packed into the archive. they need to be placed next to the executable or in a library search path. on windows that automatically includes the directory of the executable, and so long as RPATH is set when compiling(i think thats already done in the scons and cmake) then it will also look in the local directory.

normalized · April 16, 2026, 11:14am

How about swapping the names. Have you tried that?

YanDaik · April 16, 2026, 6:01pm

yeah. It worked. I was hopping for less intrusive approach.

normalized · April 16, 2026, 6:42pm

It’s not intrusive at all, a bit hacky perhaps :). You can have two *.gdextension files and swap from a tool script. The engine should hot reload the runtimes automatically.