Pain exporting packages

I did a search and nothing came up, which surprises me. Did I miss something?

On two different computers, Unity 4.3.3 is a complete pain to export packages with. When exporting, more stuff than necessary gets shown in the list of export items. The list is out of order. Folders are often missing the folder line, so you have to (un)tick items individually. These things combine to ensure that a) you need to go over every item individually and b) when you find issues it takes the longest possible time to correct them because you have to do it item by item.

The import list seems to have the same issues, but at least it's not as big a deal because presumably you want to import the whole lot. But I can see why sometimes you might not want to... and who wants to un-tick every NGUI example scene and content item manually?

Anyway, are others having this issue or is it just me and my 3 computers?

 

I've reported one bug before, that more files get included than are used,
cant remember now what was their answer actually..


I usually do this to export scene related files:
- select the scene in project window
- right click / select dependencies
- right click / export
- uncheck [ ] include dependencies (in the exporting package window)
..

 

To be honest I'm more concerned with the list being out of order and the folder lines being missing. It means that I potentially have to touch hundreds of individual files by hand, instead of unticking one or a few folders.

Take NGUI for instance. It's a valid dependency a lot of the time, but even so I don't always want to export it as I often know that the destination already has it (often a different version, so I especially don't want to import a different one on top). Instead of unticking the root "NGUI" folder, I had to manually untick every single NGUI file.

You can't multi-select, and the only batch option on that dialog gets applied to all items. Even keyboard mashing through the list it took me a while to get everything in order.

I can understand it picking up extra dependencies, because that stuff can get messy and with loose references in some assets it might get hard to track accurately.

I don't understand the inability to provide a well formatted list with use-case appropriate controls, insofar as this used to be perfectly fine and now seems consistently broken.

Edit: Bug report filed.

 

With things like NGUI, because the TransformInspector, pretty much any export that contain transforms, will contain the whole NGUI tree. Though frustrating, it does make sense. The exporter doesn't actually parse what your code does, nor should it. It only checks to see if one object references another object. Which is also why there isn't a folder check/uncheck/ref in the export, as folders are not referenced/dependent on code. They appear indented because of path. A reference or the ability to check/uncheck a folder in the dependency list isn't pragmatic because it implies a incorrect dependancy. So folders aren't actually included in a package, but paths of objects are.

On the import side, there is more flexibility, because it is adding assets, it doesn't care about dependancies.

Because of our process/pipeline and branching, I have export/import assets many times a day. Mostly locally between branches, but occasionally to hand off something discreet to another dev. The NGUI thing and tons of other things used to bug me and I would go through and uncheck a couple of hundred things by hand. But I have come learn/realize that it really doesn't matter. I will check to ensure the things I need are there, but just ignore everything else. It is easy enough to ignore things on import, and most of the time if stuff exists it will be ignored already.

Order shouldn't be an issue, as presumably it builds that list by branching out. Extra/duplicates in export should't be an issue because if they already exist they will be ignored.

I am curious what did you report as a "bug"? It may be a little convoluted and brute force, but is something actually not working?

 

I reported what I'm pretty sure is a change in behaviour, mostly related to the lack of folder lines in the list.

I completely understand that the folder itself isn't a dependency, but having them shown still makes sense as a bulk select/unselect tool for whatever's inside - NGUI being a perfect example of this. I'm 99% sure that they used to show up consistently. As it is, they now show up sometimes, and sometimes not, even in the same list.

And yeah, I also assume that the order stuff is displayed in is related to the order the algorithm finds it in. As a user, though, I don't care how the internals work. Lets not let technical details get in the way of workflow, here - I'm already very familiar with a superset of the information I'm sorting through, why not take advantage of that? Displaying it in a different order just means I have to spend more time going through it by hand, where sorting things is something a computer can do in no time flat. Same deal with (de)selecting dozens or hundreds of items.

As for duplicates not really mattering, that's only really the case if they're the same version and in the same place in the project folder.

 

Hmm... I don't remember ever seeing folders. But I was never looking that close, they may have.

True, but they only matter at import, not at export.

I am not disagreeing, more options (multi-select, sorting) wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

I respectfully disagree. I don't assume that the person importing on the other end knows anything more than "double click, press import", because it's my job to make sure it's import ready. I do not wish to hand a non-coder anything that might break the code, because then it's my job to fix it, and I'd rather get it right the first time.

 

Well, sure, that makes sense. If you are packaging for someone external, you want it to be clean. I was just speaking in context to the example you initially provided, transferring between your own computers. I was assuming in that case since you are exporting for you, then the other you knows more than to just double-click.

 

Haha, yeah, that's true.

I do reasonably commonly export stuff for office use, though, and one of the guys and I were discussing just the other day that we thought the import/export process had changed for the worse, but weren't quite sure.

 

Go to
Edit>Project Settings>Editor

Then change hidden meta files to visible.
Then resave your scene/project.
Then just zip your project folder and unzip it on the other computer.
I was having the same problem as you. This seems like the easiest way to get everything over without anything breaking.

Hope this helps