Getting Defold working in an education enviroment

Hi
IT technician in a school here.
I have been tasked with getting Defold rolled out across our school. Im currently at the testing process before rolling out but have run into a couple of issue I was wondering if anyone has come across before or know a way around. The first one being, when trying to create a project, be it empty or template, we get a pop up saying ‘Could not establish an SSL Connection’ (Full details listed at the bottom) after spending the last few days looking into this and lots of testing within our firewall we can reliably get past this stage by adding www.GitHub.com to our allowed sites. The problem with doing this though means that staff and students would have full access to github which due to code/ exe’s etc that can be stored/ accessed this isn’t a viable option to roll out. Is there a way of getting past this stage without having to open up access to github?
I have been doing a lot of research on this and stumbled across another post where someone was having the same issues we are but the thread went quite early on with no real fix mentioned

Running in schools - Managed Servers - Questions - Defold game engine forum

As mentioned in the thread attached there is the possibility that Defold could be run with no internet connection required as internet connection is only really required to load the samples and templates. I have checked with our ICT teachers and there not bothered on samples and templates, they just need empty projects. Issue 2, I have tried accessing Defold without internet connection on my PC and get the message ‘You must be connected to the internet to download project content’. Is there a way of running Defold without internet connection to bypass the need of calling out to Github

Any help/ guidance would be appreciated.

Could not establish an SSL connection
Common causes are:
-Antivirus software configured to scan encrypted connections
-Expired or misconfigured server certificate
-Untrusted server certificate

The following FAQ may apply: PKIX path building fails

PKIX path building faild:
sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

1 Like

The simplest solution to this problem is for students to download the empty project template from GitHub (they do have internet access right?):

https://github.com/defold/template-empty/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

Once the zip archive is downloaded the student can unzip the archive and use the Open From Disk option to open the project and start working:

Hi Britzel,

Yes students do have access to the internet but the issue is we as a school have GitHub blocked within our firewall for students meaning they are unable to accessing anything that is linked to GitHub. I have spoken to my manager and I have been told that unblocking any part part of GitHub isn’t an option for us. it will be staying blocked for students.

Luke

1 Like

Ok, so how about putting that zip archive on an internal/school network? Or adding it to the local dev machines where you also install Defold?

2 Likes