Dont understand plastic. Cant update to newest change set

[hugogamesjacob]

Hello. 

We are a game company who just started creating our new project in unity. In that process we needed to select a source control software to be used by the project and any future projects. We decided to give Plastic a try.

 

Now we have been using it for about 2 months, but it surely have been a really bumpy road, with a lot of frustration and many wasted hours, trying to figure out what Plastic is trying to tell us and how it want us to work.

 

We just do not get it. We have plenty experience with git, svn, mercurial and unity asset server. However, this one keeps hindering our road - every day.

 

Why don’t we get it, I do not know. It just feels very counter intuitive and with many error messages that we do not quite understand. We keep telling ourselves, that it must be a different workflow than we are used to.

 

I think it is hard to address all our problems in one thread. Therefore, here is the problem of the day. Should be simple.

 

 

Why can’t I update to the latest changeset?

I am on main branch changeset 99

There are 2 newer changesets

I have no pending changes

If I press the "Refresh" and "Update workspace" inside the "Items" tab, it does not do anything.

What am I missing here?

[calbzam]

Hi,

 

I´m sorry that you are facing issues when using Plastic.

We could arrange a meeting to discuss and review your issues and we can give you some usage advice.   You can also directly contact us at:   support at codicesoftware dot com

 

Regarding you question: If you have your workspace pointing to a specific changeset,  and you run a update operation, it will be updated to this changeset.  But if you have your workspace pointing to a specific branch, and run the update operation, it will be updated to the last changeset of the branch. You just need to review the workspace selector and configure it as expected.

 

To be sure that the workspace selector is pointing to a branch and not to a specific changeset,  Branch explorer -->  right-click --> Switch to branch.

After that if you drive to the items view, when you click on the "Update" button, the workspace will be updated to the last changeset of the branch

 

Regards,

Carlos.

[JakubH]

You are not the first one who got confused with the switching to a changet vs. a branch. ;-)

http://www.plasticscm.net/index.php?/topic/1181-update-with-newer-changes/
http://www.plasticscm.net/index.php?/topic/2203-help-me-understand-update/

Every time I explain Plastic to somebody new I emphasize this. Look at the upper left corner of the GUI. It should be "Branch" there. If you have "Changeset" there, you probably need to perform a "Switch to a branch".

 

To Codice: maybe it would be a good idea to make it more intuitive in GUI. While a changeset in a selector is a very special use case, it might be useful if you render the text Changeset XY (in the upper left corner of the GUI) in a red color and add a hint to a tooltip explaining what is going on. Something like: You are stick to a specific changeset, so Update operation doesn't bring you newer changes. If you don't want that, use Switch to a branch.

[hugogamesjacob]

wow. Thank you Jakub. That made the trick. You are right, that is very confussing. I have encountered this so many times and never understood what was happening.

 

I actually read the second post you are linking to, some weeks back, but it did not help me understand it.

 

This also fixes another headache we have been facing several times. That is:

How to get another persons/changesets changes without checking in your own changes first.

For this to work we have set in preferences --> other options --> behavior when trying to switch update workspace with changed item --> to "allow"

 

 

Well, this have been the smallest of our problems. Think I will post again, when the next problem arise.

 

 

@calbzam

Thank you. Maybe we could use a meeting at some point. Think we will need to gather our problems in a list before we do that.

[manu]

Hi Jacob!

 

thanks for the feedback, Jakub you too We'll take it into account.

 

BTW, I played to your Hugo troll race game! kudos for it!!

[hugogamesjacob]

great thanks

[manu]

We are going to study a change for the "Swtich to changeset" operation.

 

We think we can switch the workspace to the desired changeset but the selector can point to the branch, then the update operation will work as expected....