Merging scenes

[badescuga]

I am interested in switching to plastic scm from git VC. I want to do so because we are having big problems on merging scenes. Does plastic scm provide a better merge for unity scenes? (i.e. not just binary code comparison, maybe some 'smart' solution for unity's troublesome scene structure).

 

One big problem we are having is when developers create objects and try a merge. I suspect it is because unity has a weird fileid system. 

[manu]

Hello!

 

look, the issue is that Unity has this kind of scene files that are not mergeable using a text-based merge tool... Even SemanticMerge can't handle them

 

The good point is that the Unity guys are preparing a merge tool to merge the scene files, we talked with them and it seems it will be ready for Unity 5.

 

Notice that although Unity handled a lot of meta files Plastic with its Unity plugin helps you a lot to handle them and of course, if you are not familiar with the excluisve checkout to prevent unneeded merge operations I do recommend you to take a look into it...

 

some interesting info:

http://plasticscm.com/unity-plugin.html

http://www.plasticscm.com/whats-new/checkout.aspx

http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2013/02/unity.html

[txcom2003]

To make merging scene/prefabs in unity possible, set "Asset Serialization" to "Force Text" in Edit > Project Setting > Editor.

[manu]

That sounds interesting!

 

Then, modifying the scenes gets all the files changes, completely, unrecognizable or just a portion of it? I'm curios about if that text format is mergeable or if it's impossible because changing a single bit rebuilds the file entirely.

[PolishRenegade]

Just wanted to shime-in and say that the text-serialization for Unity Scenes is extremely dangerous. 

 

We've tried it in the past and for -very simple- merges like adding a new GameObject to a scene or deleting an existing object in another branch, it works okay.

 

However, due to the YAML structure of the scenes, any and all conflicts are un-resolvable without considerable efforts. And conflicts can arise very easily by just renaming the parent on both workspace and destination, or moving the GO around in the hierarchy.

 

Unless you can create a smart YAML merger (wink wink nudge nudge to Codice), I do not advice using it. 

 

Also, this tweet from an Unity Employee is of interest; https://twitter.com/aras_p/status/484233825636327424