[Fix Out] Checking for changes

is preview-12 only available for 2019.1?

 

we need an option to not check for changes. If you lose your internet connection and re establish it, it will auto check. Which adds significant time to the overall process.

 

Fired up unity this morning and got a mono.exe error. Collab window was blank when I opened it.
Restarted unity and it now seems to be working.
Using 2019.1.1f1 with collab 2.0.0 preview-12

A nice addition would be some kind of visual indication as to the progress made on the background process such as a % complete.

Also a last successful scan date & time because I'm seeing a green up to date tick when I know it should be a blue arrow.

 

I'm currently seeing the following message when I come back to unity after I put my PC in sleep mode and resume. I've tried leaving it for a few minutes but it doesnt update and frustration gets the better of me so I restart unity.
Using 2019.1.1f1 with collab 2.0.0 preview-12

 

I work solo, using 2019.2.
I still see this dialog running for 10 to 15 mins everytime I start my Unity project! How do I disable it? This is becoming a nuisance each day

 

You can remove collaborate in the Package Manager.

 

You my friend are a saviour!

 

I just wanted to chime in and say that... it's 2020 and there is no reason why collab should be locking up the editor for over 2 minutes to "check for changes" EVERY time I start Unity. It's especially bad when you have to reboot the editor 3 or 4 times a night and watch it check for changes every time. It's completely killing productivity the larger the project gets. It's wasting precious seconds of my life.. I can literally feel myself getting older as I'm watching this progress bar and I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be able to complete my game in this lifetime. I've been watching collab improve since it's early beta stages but this is still something that it is FAILING with.

 

Move to Plastic SCM.

 

@JGameMaker92 what version of unity are you using and what version of collab?

I used to get the problem you describe but I’m running unity 2019.2.12 with the latest preview version available (not at pc so can’t check but will edit when I can) and I don’t have any major problems.

 

Is there a way to transfer history when moving to plastic from Collab?

 

No, they are totally different platforms. Plastic has a bit of a learning curve, but a whole lot of other advantages beyond no checking for changes. To be honest, I would not consider releasing a commercial project without Plastic SCM. Definitely not with Collaborate. Plastic even handles merging of scene changes.

 

Collaborate does too, and it's.... hell.

 

My Unity project is taking more than half hour to load because of checking for changes loader. Its a big project. This issue isn't resolved yet? I am using 2019.2.12f1.

 

I'm also on 2019.2.12f1 and I use Collab 2.0.0 preview-17 and I no longer have this problem.
Occasionally I get a lock file problem and it will also say "Sorry, something went wrong, please try again later" but thats about it. No more checking for changes, although I am now currently working solo on the project so that might have something to do with it.

 

I will try Collab 2.0.0 preview - 17 to see if it makes it better. Thanks for info

 

We did. Being able to 'just' start Unity and getting updates without lockups has been heavenly.

 

To chime in, our project is 16GB and 'checking for changes' takes over a half an hour. 2 minutes would be really nice

 

Moved to Collaborate 2.0 (preview-17), much improved, for those staying on the older version, make sure your project(s) are on an SSD, preferably NVMe, it cuts down the time considerably.

 

Chiming in to recommend that anyone still using Collaborate should abandon it for an alternative such as Perforce or PlasticSCM. Unity Collaborate isn't a functional system and there's no indication that it will be production-ready any time soon. We switched to Perforce and it's been a much better experience.

 

This checking for changes is still in 2020.1 now even if you don't have collaboration ON it's checking every couple of minutes for up to 10 minutes, that's just crazy.

 

You can remove it from the package manager.

 

I know, I do need it sometimes but not all the time on. Thank you for responding do We need a choice button if we want to check or not

 

Weirdly, removing it from the package manager does not stop "checking for changes" from happening.

 

You won't have it. You're not the first to ask and Unity never addressed that issue. I replaced collab with Plastic SCM for that reason 1.5 years ago because and am baffled this is still a problem.

You're welcome anyways

 

Really? I haven't seen the check for changes since I switched for Plastic. Even my quick tests projects with the default setup including collab don't show anything.

 

Not always, it's a bug. But apparently parts of Collaborate live outside of the package, so if you don't have the package, but do have the service on in the services menu OR Unity for whatever reason (typically, a bug) still thinks it's on, regardless of it not being installed and being off in the services menu, the checking for changes still appears.

 

I don't use their services at the moment so that could be the reason I don't have that problem.

I activated them to test if I get the check for changes.

 

I can confirm this just happened to me now, I uninstalled collaboration and had this freaking checking changes again

 

@ryanc-unity Thank you for your response can't wait for b11 will download and try it right away and let you know of course, but besides this bug, I have to compliment Unity this 2020.1 version even in beta is the best Unity Engine version since I joined in 2013 or before that, great job whoever is working on it, and I would say I just scratched the surface comparing it with performance, memory consumption, play (edit mode) speed, build speed, overall performance and the hall of fames bug fix for the 4GB resource file limit, wow.

 

Has the OutofMemory error been fixed for large projects using large files?

 

Using Collab 2.0 preview 17, happens on all PC's connected via Collab with large projects/files:

Code (CSharp):

1. CollabProxyException: Out of memory
2. UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object)
3. CollabProxy.Client.CollabVersionControl:LogExceptionDetails(Exception) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.collab-proxy@2.0.0-preview.17/Editor/Client/CollabVersionControl.cs:445)
4. CollabProxy.Client.CollabVersionControl:OnGetChangesException(Exception) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.collab-proxy@2.0.0-preview.17/Editor/Client/CollabVersionControl.cs:242)
5. CollabProxy.Client.<>c__DisplayClass18_0`1:<RegisterListener>b__0(PacketHeader, Connection, String) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.collab-proxy@2.0.0-preview.17/Editor/Client/CollabProxyClient.cs:286)
6. NetworkCommsDotNet.Tools.PacketTypeHandlerDelegateWrapper`1:Process(PacketHeader, Connection, Object)
7. NetworkCommsDotNet.Connections.Connection:TriggerSpecificPacketHandlers(PacketHeader, Object)
8. NetworkCommsDotNet.NetworkComms:TriggerAllPacketHandlers(PacketHeader, Connection, MemoryStream, SendReceiveOptions, Boolean)
9. NetworkCommsDotNet.NetworkComms:TriggerAllPacketHandlers(PacketHeader, Connection, MemoryStream, SendReceiveOptions)
10. NetworkCommsDotNet.NetworkComms:CompleteIncomingItemTask(Object)
11. NetworkCommsDotNet.Tools.CommsThreadPool:ThreadWorker(Object)
12. System.Threading.ThreadHelper:ThreadStart(Object)

 

This of course happens with I start working.


This happens randomly soon after, often needs a restart.


These take like 5 minutes:


This one it was stuck like this until I restarted the editor:


This is me trying to get some changes, but it was stuck like this for 5 minutes:


Tried to do the trick with the revert that makes taking changes faster : this took 5 minutes (sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's super slow)


And was almost instantly followed, making the time I wasted above completely pointless


Then it got stuck like this for 5 minutes.
.

And then Unity crashed, and when I restarted, I of course was met with:


All the above was in the span OF A BIT OF OVER AN HOUR.

How much work do you think I managed to get done in that time?

Publicly apologize for Collaborate and publicly apologize for promising to fix it more than 3 years ago and then DOING NOTHING.

(for clarity: I am not asking for the developers to apologize, I am asking for Unity, the Company to apologize, this is the result of systemic and structural problems and I'm not looking for scapegoats)

If you don't do any of that, then just WRITE A TOOL THAT EXPORTS THE HISTORY TO ANOTHER FORMAT, so we take the history (if it's not corrupt already) and move to another service.

THEN SHUT DOWN COLLABORATE.

How dare you charge money for Collaborate in its current state?

This thread has [Fix Out] on it? What a joke.

This is class action lawsuit material.

Edit: (now that I calmed down I re-wrote it a bit, but mainly I just reduced the amount of CAPS and added a bit of clarification, otherwise I stand by what I said)

 

That is probably all they will do, is shut down the service once enough people stop paying for it.

It seems like the team involved in Collab, Cloud Build, Cloud statistics and I guess the whole teams/dashboard in general really don't know what they are doing.

We're all developers here, and some of us in live environments where we know where the line should be drawn for what is amateur and professional.

Teams and everything surrounding it, truly do appear amateur at best.

Perhaps the team on this is actually competent and it's the lack of management/resources being put into this, but I have my doubts. This has been going on for several years and prioritizing a new dashboard for services that constantly are under scrutiny for their stability and the best we get now is that they realize they are not competent to create a proper repository system so will be looking at other 3rd party services to tie into.

However, that'll likely never happen either at the rate of their development.

Collaborate Developer Diary #1: Exploring the New Design

^ July 2019. All the promises and still no #2, or remotely stable service.

I'm truly terrified by it all because we made a HUGE mistake in trusting Unity and tying our entire publishing setup into the unity collab & cloudbuild services, which is tied to our own patch note formatting and distribution tag system.
Reworking all this during a major downturn in the economy and all the other setbacks Unity has caused us is probably 'game over' for our budgeting as we seem to constantly have to spend more time and money into 'work arounds' for all the problems with Unity than we can on actual effing game development.

The worst part is I think these guys think we are keyboard warrior'ing it with our complaints. But given the time wasted and damage done to many studio's & indy devs with the BS from Unity over the last couple years especially, I think we'd be far more intense in person than we are being on the forum. It is taking every last fiber for me not to use all caps, cuss and name call at these guys some days. Really wish it didn't come to that.

Shame on them.

 

This is actually strange - on intel cpu laptop it takes like 20 seconds at most, but on much more powerful AMD cpu workstation it's easily over 5 minutes.eh

 

I just moved to PlasticSCM, Unity has a migration process for it (also gives discounted pricing), everything is just so much easier/faster now, no more dreaded "checking for changes".

Only minor issue I encountered was having to quit Unity to undo stuff (much more reliable that way).

 

How long did migration take for you?

 

About 15-20 minutes for them to transfer the collab project to plastic, to be safe I then redownloaded the project via plastic windows client (depends on your projects size/your internet connection), installed plastics unity client, all done.

Even with a very large project I'd say it all could be easily done within an hour.

 

We're nearing hour 3 and the migration hasn't happened yet. I don't think our project is particularly large.

 

Unless its a manual job their end and they are off for the weekend?

 

In that case they should have told me so and stopped me from initiating the process (instead of telling me "it should take 20 minutes") before they archived the Collaborate project leaving me unable to work.

 

Is there any benefits to the migration?

Since Collab doesn't have branches you would only get your history. Unless you need to access it on a regular basis, you can leave that on collab and just import you current project on a fresh Plastic repo.

Edit: that's what I did back then and my old collab history might still be available.

 

That I would not need to upload the whole project from scratch on my slow ass 1mbps upload line. So I presumed migration would take less time and having history would be a bonus.

I'm now thinking migration will take longer...

 

Stop hoping and presuming unqualified people are going to help you and think about solutions.

Does collaborate works? No. Then don't use it. (that includes their migration tool)

Can you upload your project on your 1MB bandwidth? No. Then go to a friends who does have fiber and be done in an hour.

That's what I did almost two years ago and I never understood what you were waiting for.

 

The problem is that I'm starting to believe "unqualified people" also includes PlasticSCM now.

I've long thought the real solution was to set up SVN on a private server, but since that would take a while to properly set up, and we're always close to one deadline or another, I kept putting it off.

The PlasticSCM migration wizard had the allure of possibly being able to migrate and be able to get back to working within a day, but I see now that it's not meant to be.

Also, none of my friends have fiber (it's not very widespread in the city I'm currently in), but in cases such as these the solution is to tether my phone and use mobile 4G internet to upload stuff...

 

That was just a guess but you can always email them and they generally respond within a day.

Also if you have unlimited/high usage 4G packages available in your areas I highly recommend it as the upload speeds tend to be superior to landlines equivalents, get an external antenna mounted high up and you can get very high speeds.

In the mean time you could clone your project, work, then port the changes to the plastic linked project later.