Remove unused vendored PlayFab REST API SDK from the C++ GSDK (reverts #200)

[Dimitris Gkanatsios (dgkanatsios)]

Summary

Removes the vendored PlayFab REST API SDK (cpp/cppsdk/source/playfab/ and cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/) from the C++ GSDK — 22 files, ~48k lines. It is a fork of XPlatCppSdk frozen at 2.0.180420 (April 2018) that no shipping artifact contains.

This also reverts #200, which is the reason I went looking.

Three commits, easy to split if preferred:

• f11474f — the removal (+5 / -55,436)
• 9367a38 — standard-header include fixes (+2)
• 8e7e39d — guarantee the global uint32_t/tm names, from review feedback (+5)

Why this is dead code

Check	Result
Compiled by CMakeLists.txt?	No — builds 6 files, none of them PlayFab
Compiled by GSDK_CPP_Windows.vcxproj?	No
Compiled by GSDK_CPP_Linux.vcxproj?	Yes — the only one, and CI never builds it
Linked into a game server?	No — nm/dumpbin show 0 PlayFabHttp symbols on either platform, even when force-compiled
Shipped in the NuGet package?	No — com.playfab.cppgsdk.v140.nuspec exports only gsdk.h
Maintained?	Touched twice in repo history: initial import, and #200

On #200

#200 set CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER to true in PlayFabHttp.cpp to fix a reported MITM risk. I tested this on Windows and Linux.

It had no effect on anything shipped. Building the SDK with the PR applied vs. reverted produces byte-identical output (a control build confirms determinism first):

Config	lib	exe
control x2	63d97fac = 63d97fac	7f3e80ee = 7f3e80ee
shipped, PR applied	63d97fac	7f3e80ee
shipped, PR reverted	63d97fac	7f3e80ee
PlayFab-enabled, reverted	a3fc67ca	7f3e80ee
PlayFab-enabled, applied	8bb62156	7f3e80ee

The PlayFab-enabled lib hashes do differ, which confirms the toggle works and the null result above is real. The executable is identical in all four cases.

The GSDK heartbeat was never affected. It uses a separate curl handle in gsdk.cpp over a hardcoded plain-HTTP URL and never sets CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER:

m_heartbeatUrl += "http://";   // gsdk.cpp:111

CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER is a no-op on http:// — verified byte-identical responses on both platforms.

But it was not a safe no-op either. If that path were ever revived on Windows, the change breaks it. The bundled libcurl links OpenSSL 1.1, which ignores the Windows certificate store, and no CA bundle ships with the SDK. Exercising PlayFabHttp::ExecuteRequest for real:

	VERIFYPEER=false	VERIFYPEER=true
Windows	HTTP 400 InvalidAPIEndpoint (TLS OK)	HTTP 408 — curl error: 60, cert verification failed
Linux	HTTP 400 (TLS OK)	HTTP 400 (TLS OK) — system CA store

#200 deleted the comment // TODO: Replace this with a ca-bundle ref???. That TODO was the outstanding work, and it was removed without being done. Deleting the code retires the finding permanently rather than leaving a broken path for the next person.

Games needing PlayFab APIs should use PlayFab/XPlatCppSdk directly.

Other changes

• cppLinuxTestApp — stripped its PlayFab calls (self-described as "Super hacky short-term functionality PlayFab Test", hardcoding titleId = "6195" and hitting a live API on startup). The GSDK coverage is kept.

• DISABLE_PLAYFABCLIENT_API — removed from the two Windows test app projects; inert once the vendored headers are gone.

• gsdk.h include fixes — the header is the only one the NuGet package ships, and it was not self-contained. It uses uint32_t and tm unqualified (lines 47, 50, 147) but included neither header, so it failed to compile under GCC and otherwise relied on the consumer including <ctime> first.

  It now includes <cstdint>/<ctime> and <stdint.h>/<time.h>. Both spellings are deliberate: the C compatibility headers guarantee the global names the header itself uses, while the C++ headers keep std::tm/std::uint32_t available to consumers. Using only the C headers measurably drops std::tm on libstdc++ under C++14. Verified with -pedantic under C++11/14/17/20.

  Pre-existing and unrelated to the deletion, but it blocked building the Linux test apps used to verify this change. Happy to split out.

• cppLinuxTestApp #include <cstdlib> — from review feedback; std::exit was resolving through a transitive include. Note this was not caused by removing the PlayFab headers: std::exit leaks in via <string> and <stdexcept>, both included by gsdk.h, so it compiled the same before and after. Made explicit anyway, since transitive includes aren't guaranteed by the standard.

Testing

Verified locally on both platforms with the deletion applied.

Linux (Ubuntu 24.04, GCC 13.3, libcurl 8.5.0/OpenSSL 3):

• SDK builds clean via the repo CMakeLists.txt; libGSDK_CPP_Linux.a contains the expected 6 objects
• cppLinuxTestApp and cppLinuxRunnerGame compile and link
• gsdk.h compiles standalone under C++11/14/17/20 with -pedantic; consumers can use tm, std::tm, uint32_t and std::uint32_t
• End-to-end vs. LocalMultiplayerAgent: 42 heartbeats, StandingBy -> Active -> Terminating, 0 non-200s, all plain HTTP

Windows (MSVC 14.44, SDK 10.0.26100):

• GSDK_CPP_Windows (the shipped library) builds
• GSDK_CPP_UnitTests builds — the exact CI target
• Unit tests: 15/15 passed via vstest.console
• End-to-end vs. LocalMultiplayerAgent: 42 heartbeats, StandingBy -> Active -> Terminating, 0 non-200s, all plain HTTP

Both platforms match each other and the pre-deletion baseline exactly. Remaining warnings (C4244 in gsdkUtils.h, deprecated registerMaintenanceCallback) are all pre-existing.

The Windows run above covers f11474f. The two later commits are header-include-only changes; CI covers them on windows-latest.

Risk

Effectively nil for NuGet consumers — the published library never contained these symbols, so there is no ABI break. The only theoretical breakage is someone vendoring the full repo, building GSDK_CPP_Linux.vcxproj, and calling PlayFab APIs — who is already on an 8-year-stale SDK. Probably worth a release-note line.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR removes the unused, vendored PlayFab REST API C++ SDK implementation from the C++ GSDK (cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/ and cpp/cppsdk/source/playfab/), reverting the prior security tweak from #200 by retiring the entire dead codepath rather than maintaining it.

Changes:

• Delete the vendored PlayFab REST API SDK sources/headers from cpp/cppsdk.
• Remove PlayFab API calls from cppLinuxTestApp and clean up project definitions that referenced PlayFab toggles/files.
• Fix a C++ portability issue by adding a missing standard header include (<cstdint>) to gsdk.h.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 21 out of 28 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
cpp/testapps/cppWindowsTestApp/cppWindowsTestApp.vcxproj	Removes DISABLE_PLAYFABCLIENT_API define from Windows test app build definitions.
cpp/testapps/cppWindowsRunnerGame/cppWindowsRunnerGame.vcxproj	Removes DISABLE_PLAYFABCLIENT_API define from Windows runner build definitions.
cpp/testapps/cppLinuxTestApp/main.cpp	Removes PlayFab login/profile calls; keeps GSDK lifecycle test behavior.
cpp/cppsdk/source/playfab/PlayFabSettings.cpp	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/source/playfab/PlayFabMatchmakerApi.cpp	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/source/playfab/PlayFabHttp.cpp	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/source/playfab/PlayFabError.cpp	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/source/playfab/PlayFabEntityApi.cpp	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabSettings.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabServerApi.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabMatchmakerDataModels.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabMatchmakerApi.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabHttp.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabError.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabEntityApi.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabClientApi.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabBaseModel.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/include/playfab/PlayFabAdminApi.h	Deleted (vendored PlayFab SDK removal).
cpp/cppsdk/gsdk.h	Adds <cstdint> to ensure uint32_t is available for GCC/Clang builds.
cpp/cppsdk/GSDK_CPP_Linux.vcxproj.filters	Removes PlayFab filter entries now that files are deleted.
cpp/cppsdk/GSDK_CPP_Linux.vcxproj	Removes PlayFab include/compile items from the Linux vcxproj.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 21 out of 28 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

[Andy McCalib (amccalib)]

Nit (non-blocking, post-merge): two dangling references to the now-deleted cpp/cppsdk/include/ survived the removal.

• cpp/CMakeLists.txt:31 — target_include_directories(GSDK_CPP PRIVATE cppsdk cppsdk/include)
• cpp/unittests/GSDK_CPP_UnitTests.vcxproj:99 and :119 — $(SolutionDir)cppsdk\include

Both are harmless: neither MSBuild nor CMake errors on a nonexistent -I path, which is why CI stayed green. They are just stale now that the directory is gone.

While in those two vcxproj lines, $(SolutionDir)cppsdk is also listed twice:

$(SolutionDir)dependencies\libcurl-...\include;$(SolutionDir)cppsdk;$(VCInstallDir)UnitTest\include;$(SolutionDir)cppsdk;$(SolutionDir)cppsdk\include;%(AdditionalIncludeDirectories)

That duplication is pre-existing and unrelated to this change, but it is easy to tidy in the same sweep.