ClientRpc and ServerRpc decorators should give an error if attached to a non-NetworkBehaviour class method

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#1,911 opened on Apr 27, 2022 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty: 5/5
Estimated time: Over a week
Newbie friendliness: 35/100

Issue type: Feature
Clarity: Needs clarification
Activity status: Stale
Tech stack: csharp
Domain: networking

Research direction

The issue does not name files, tests, or entry points. Start by locating the ClientRpc and ServerRpc decorator handling and how NetworkBehaviour inheritance is checked; define and test a diagnostic for methods on classes that do not derive from NetworkBehaviour, including the requested runtime or editor behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Tracking type:feature

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I'm finding it easy to accidentally add [ClientRpc] or [ServerRpc] methods to MonoBehaviour-derived classes, where clearly they won't do anything. This leads to a bunch of confusion while I try to figure out what's wrong with the networking only to do the forehead-slap when I notice that the class hasn't been switched to NetworkBehaviour.

Describe the solution you'd like
At a minimum, a runtime error with a descriptive error message would be helpful. Something like "FooClientRpc was added to a class that doesn't derive from NetworkBehaviour - as a result, FooClientRpc will never be called."

Better would be a similar error logged when in the editor. Compile-time errors would be ideal if possible, of course.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Beyond "vigilance" (which can be assumed doesn't work), if it becomes a more serious issue then I'd have to rig some sort of linting rule to catch this.

Dominant language: C#
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