This guide explains how to configure and setup an Windows Machine (be it on metal or as VM) to use as Selfhosted GitHub runner for building Satisfactory Mods.
Install an Up-to-date version of windows on the machine. A plain Windows 11 installation is enough and preferable.
I have composed an Winget file containing all the Software I use for my CI pipeline.
This includes software like Git, Git LFS, 7zip and more.
Winget should be installed by default in Windows 11.
Download the winget.json file on the system and install the listed software using:
winget --import winget.json
This will also have the Visual Studio Installer gotten installed.
Start it, click on More and Import Configuration.
You should the visual studio configuration you can get it from the SMR Docs.
This is effectively the same installation procedure as shown in the SMR Docs.
If you intend to also compile for Linux Dedicated Server, you have to install the cross compile toolchain for Unreal Engine.
You can download the toolchain from the Unreal Engine Docs.
In the Version History Table download the Cross-Compile Toolchain for the Engine Version of the Game you target.
Once downloaded, run the installer with default configuration.
To install and run the GitHub Actions runner, first go to your GitHub Repository.
Go into Settings→`Actions`→`Runners` and click on New self-hosted runner.
Follow the instructions of GitHub but instead of creating an actions-runner folder,
create an short-named folder at the root of your disk. e.g. C:\CI
This is necessary to prevent long filepath issues (caused by Windows Building UE).
When doing the actions-runner config, I reccomend to mostly keep the defaults except the name and especially have it install as service using the default user.
Thats it!
You should now have a working Windows Machine capable of beeing used as Runner in your Mods CI Workflow for building.