This is the default set of packages for the BEE2.4. These contain the definitions for the items, styles, etc. as well as any custom assets used by them.
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These packages are useless without the BEE2 application installed, so do that first.
By default, packages are loaded from a packages/ subfolder located wherever BEE2.4 is installed, so the contents of the latest release should be placed there. User-created packages can also be placed in this directory and will be loaded automatically.
While the packages are distributed as .bee_pack (renamed ZIP) files inside releases, the app also has the ability to load packages from unpacked folders for development purposes.
If you clone a copy of this repository to your computer, BEE2.4 can load the packages directly from the clone if the package folder location is pointed to it. You can change this location through the BEE2 config file, which is located at %appdata%/BEEMOD2/config/config.cfg on Windows or ~/.config/BEEMOD2/config/config.cfg on Linux. Use this when making changes for pull requests, etc.
Note that BEEmod will force a full copy of all resources on every export while unzipped packages are present, so you might not want to keep it this way when using BEE normally.
Also, if you use packages from the dev branch with a regular release build of BEEmod, you might encounter errors due to unimplemented/changed features. In this case you will need to either build from source or use a CI build. On that note, if you just want to use upcoming features early and aren't interested in developing new content, you're probably better off using CI build packages as well.
Anything that is placed in the folders Portal 2/bee2 and Portal 2/sdk_content/maps/instances/bee2 will be deleted when exporting from BEE2.4 If you are developing custom packages, you can enable the setting Preserve Game Directories to disable copying resources. Do not enable this option unless you are developing new content, it will cause compiling to break after installing new packages or updates.