The OP is asking about changing the name of the project folder, not directories internal to the project.
I've done this on both Godot 3 and 4 and never had an issue. And the editor should not crash (ever for any reason). That's just poor programming.
Wait, I spoke too soon. It deleted my whole project. Hmmm... what did I say about poor programming...
If you are expecting Godot to never crash... well... lol to that
Crashes are a REGULAR part of software development and is not unique to Godot
In time you learn to deal with it and work around it and find why your actions are causing it to crash. Sure it isn't your fault... but you still have to deal with it
Also, good practice, run Godot from a command line shell.
Then you can see a lot more errors and warnings, including when it crashes (usually)
cybereality The OP is asking about changing the name of the project folder
Yes. I don't think it's even possible to do that inside the editor.
cybereality It deleted my whole project.
Is this Godot 4?
This sounds like an issue with the project manager. Maybe it's trying to perform some kind of cleanup.
davek Crashes are a REGULAR part of software development and is not unique to Godot
off-topic:
it's mostly a part of modern software dev. when we devs have to deal with tons of libraries and kernel/system libs. poorly coded like windows (thx MS dev for teaching us all the way to NOT doing the right thing), part of dev is to master our environment, something only a few care about.
The very best comes from Oracle/Sun with their great success java ! You have a problem, don't worry throw an exception, it'll be caller's responsibility, and when all devs do that, end users got a useless 1000 lines exception stack.
Well I was able to rename the project the first time. But I renamed it back and it was missing from the project launcher.
So I clicked "remove" which is supposed to remove it from the launcher (not delete it). But instead it deleted the project file and all my assets in the project folder.
No warning or popup, and this worked in Godot 3.x.
DaveTheCoder Yes. I don't think it's even possible to do that inside the editor.
For a reason. That's why dealing with the in editor file manager is the safest option, it likely won't let you do something if it's dangerous.
But renaming the file system directory containing a Godot project is perfectly reasonable. If that's suddenly become "forbidden", that's a dangerous feature.
This should be reported as a bug. I would do it, but I'm too lazy to test it right now.
DaveTheCoder But renaming the file system directory containing a Godot project is perfectly reasonable.
I'm not sure about the reasonableness of such an action. As far as I understand, the procedure of renaming the folder with the project in Godot — not a bit trivial. Need to create a new folder with the desired name and import the project into it and delete the old one.
Perhaps this is a consequence of cross-platform engine.
DaveTheCoder But renaming the file system directory containing a Godot project is perfectly reasonable. If that's suddenly become "forbidden", that's a dangerous feature.
This should be reported as a bug. I would do it, but I'm too lazy to test it right now.
Yeah, again I don't disagree, this is something that should be reported as a bug for sure. But if there is a reason why it can't be supported as an external action outside of godot it should at least become editable within godot editor. At bare minimum.
Megalomaniak But if there is a reason why it can't be supported as an external action outside of godot it should at least become editable within godot editor.
It is possible to change the project name in the editor, but not the folder. Curious as to the reason… but I suppose there is a rationale for this.
Then it probably should be better documented and communicated to the users that it's possible only in the editor, the why and the how.
edit: reading again I realize I misread you earlier. Yeah, changing the project name within the editor is possible but that just changes what the project is called in the config files.
Tomcat It is possible to change the project name in the editor, but not the folder. Curious as to the reason… but I suppose there is a rationale for this.
That's normal behavior for applications in general.
The Godot Project Manager does keep track of project names and folders. If a folder is supposed to be renamed from "within Godot", that would be the logical place to do it. But it doesn't seem to be possible now. The closest you can get is to remove a project from the list, then rename the folder using the file system and re-import it.
So I lost my project forever. If you click the "remove" button in the project manager it actually deletes the entire project with no warning or popup.
cybereality So I lost my project forever.
Not forever. At least you can restore it from your backup.
DaveTheCoder Not forever. At least you can restore it from your backup.
That's the thing. I ran out of space on my main drive so I was copying all my files over to a second drive when I did the test. That project folder got corrupted, so the backup doesn't work.
Renaming a folder isn't trivial because you can break chain of inheritance, or cause scenes to have missing resources. Godot devs just aren't spending their time testing stuff like that, because it's not a feature, that's like saying you purposely want to break your project but also Godot shouldn't crash. Not high priority
Compound this the UIDs, .import, and .godot files in 4.0 still seem to be in a state of hammering out issues, so the last thing I would recommend is renaming folders full of dependencies, unless you are doing careful file search+replace outside of Godot to do it
But everything should be relative from the root directory (the folder that the Godot dot project file is in). Godot itself should not even realize the folder has been renamed. This was how it worked in Godot 3.x.
cybereality Godot itself should not even realize the folder has been renamed.
The Project Manager needs to associate the project names with the folders that contain the projects, so that it can open a project in the editor. If you rename a project's folder, then it doesn't know where the project is. So how can it delete the files? That's strange.
