Custom resources and alternatives to export()ing?

Ephemeral

So, imagine for the moment that you have a couple of class_names that extends Resource, designed to work together with some class_name that extends Node.

In your custom node, one thing you aren't allowed to do is export(CustomResource) var your_resource, and have the Inspector allow you to simply click on the field to make a new instance local to the scene in the standard way you would with a built-in resource.

So my rather abstract question is, what are some organizational and functional alternatives / best practices that capture the essential feature of being able to design all the parts separately and then build a (many) self-contained scene(s) from them? Or is there any way to export() a custom type after all?

Ephemeral

Found https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/18.

On exactly this topic.

Some of the work-arounds there I hadn't thought of, but none of them are good. Is there a way to do this with EditorPlugin or something?

TwistedTwigleg

I don't know of any workarounds or alternative solutions right off. I've always just exported multiple arrays that I read from and to recreate/populate classes and objects. It will be great when the PR for fixing this is pulled in as it should make exporting specific/lots-of data much easier. Hopefully it will be included in Godot 3.2.

The only thing I can think of that might work for doing something like this through an EditorPlugin is inputting the data into an exported dictionary and then have the code initialize the object with the data from the exported dictionary. I don't know how doable of feasible that would be though.