Plastic SCM really complicated

Why is the entirety of plastic SCM so complicated, all I need to do is just sync a project between two devices which was very easy with collaborate but now using plastic SCM it's a headache to try and get used to all of this when I really dont have the time to be messing around with all of the options and menus just to get it to work.

On top of that, it's made syncing incredibly hard as it just spews conflicts and errors at me constantly. It's gotten to the point where I cant even open my project without having error windows show up

 

Hi @Blobord, I'm sorry you've been having such a difficult time using Plastic SCM. Could you share a few more details so that I can try to help? Your Unity Editor version, Version Control version, and exactly what errors you're seeing?

 

I can't speak for him, But I will speak for myself, PLACTIC IS GARBAGE.. worst SVN on the planet, collab was a better solution by far. Plastic has costed me more man hours of work then anything else on my project.

Here are a few of the failings..
1. Create new branch, begin work, 3 days later at 12 am, the Garbage SCM, decides to download with out rym or reason every file from the Repository and drop it into my project folder creating over 3k duplicate files while im working on my project, and altering many of my files to previous versions of code and art...WTF!!!~ the only way I could stop it was by disabling the damn thing completely, and there was no saving the 3 days or nearly 60 hours worth of work it destroyed. I had to go back to a version a week older so more work was lost.. who would make a SVN that decides on its own to correct my working file branch to an older branch with out even needing some sort of user input..

after spending days getting the project just back to a working Project, and restarting the work I had already finished from nothing.. I start worrying about not having Subversion.. I reset up plastic again since unity decided collab ( a better system) should be replaced with garbage SCM, only to open my project again tonight to new errors where the garbage SVN has yet again decided to "Correct" my days of work with and older version of files and does nothing but error with any attempt to fix it..

This is my LAST Unity project.. F***ing Unreal Engine from this point out. Collab discontinued for an absolute terrible solution that needs no help from the user to absolutely destroy any project its supposed to be managing.


this isn't an error on my part, this isn't a user error, this is just garbage software. I should be able to branch my project and work on that branch for as long as I need to do so, with out the F***ing SVN overwriting days of work with out my permission. I never had an issue with Collab not once.. I can't trust my project with Plastic, and we can't use collab anymore.. So that leaves me having to manage version control on may own cloud which is a hassle.

I love Unity, but Plastic is just what it sounds like, Cheap, unreliable Garbage. I gave it a real shot and for a while I thought It was working out just fine, but out of nowhere... it will ruin everything and has done so multiple times.. so a few months of working as it should, just be prepared if your using it, to ruin everything eventually.

I'm not doing this anymore, I left my project saved and in working order with maybe 40 hours of work, I open the project and its all gone.. the project has been reverted to the new branch exactly as I created it to start the 40 hours of work I did.. it literally reverted the entire 40 hours of work.. I don't think I can express this in a way that I should be able to express this and not be banded from unity forums forever.. which is also not cool.

trust that crap at your own peril. the only reason my project still exists at this point was because I made Manuel backups of the project to my personal cloud occasionally, if your not doing that be prepared to lose everything,.

 

Hi @MarcusRuis, I'm so sorry you had such an awful experience with Plastic SCM.

I get that you're coming from a place of understandable anger and I don't mean to diminish any of that. That said, I'd still like to try and identify if what you experienced is a bug with the Version Control package. I want to be clear that Plastic SCM does NOT push or pull any changes without user input. Plastic SCM also does NOT automatically undo anyone's changes unless the Undo option is specifically selected. That is what makes your experience both heartbreaking and confusing.

The Version Control package did have a bug (which was fixed in 1.14.11/1.15.11) where creating a new branch did not automatically trigger a scene reload. This could unfortunately result in changes made in a scene after the branch was created not being tracked and would be lost once the user opened a different scene. Could you tell me which version of the Version Control package you were using or if this above scenario sounds like an explanation for your lost work?

 

I'm using 1.15.13, I updated after the first time it ruined my week, I'm using version 10.0.16.6375 of the Mac client..

I understand you have a high level understanding of Plastic when you say it does not push or pull changes with out user input, and I too believed that to be the case, it doesn't make since that it would.
it's not 5 am and I have gotten a few hours of sleep since this happened, so let me try to explain what happened.

the first time it happened I had been using Plastic for a couple months with out any error or issue, a few days before
I had created a branch and switched my workspace to the new branch, and confirmed the switch to the new branch
in the editor & the Client Mac App, I had already done this many times and I had no issues..(this unity branch had been saved and loaded multiple times in unity during this time, both scenes and project) a few days after while
actively working on my project, I was rewriting some code that I spent days working on and was basically cleaning it up, rapidly jumping from VS to unity and allowing it to compile and checking for errors everything was great no compile errors I was literally just gonna run it one more time for the satisfaction of seeing it work as intended and I hit play in unity and I get a compile error about some such was already defined, I was like wtf, as I'm looking at this the errors just keep coming, I'm half panicked half dumb founded, it takes me a few minutes to work out what was going on, I open Plastic tab and its literally just copying, merging or creating duplicates of literally every file in the project, I quickly shut it down but the damage was done, more then 3k files had duplicates and a series of other problem was created by this. the amount of work I had done on that branch was enough that I literally spent hours trying to delete duplicates and figure out what the extent of the damage was and facing an impossible task I decided to grab a back up from more then a week before from my cloud and start from there.. that's a hard pill to swallow.

the only rym or reason I could think of was that I had deleted out some very large project folders that I then reimported into my project the day before and these were a large update to those files..

the second time its different, I backed up my project, and deleted the entire repo on Plastic, I reinstalled plastic and client (made sure it was updated), and reset everything up as a new project new branch etc, I started work confident everything was working as intended, now I worked like this with no problems, created multiple branches
over the course of idk maybe 14 days or so, I had a single error on Plastic one night while I was working it said something like it couldn't resolve host or some such (which I thought was odd) I checked the Mac App and it connected fine and in unity it seemed to have solved whatever connection problem it had because it was working fine, a couple days goes by and I saved my project & scene, when I load it back up Plastic has some errors and my project has been reverted back to the beginning of the new branch every change gone. and some errors saying there were differences in my project files that didn't match the current version of the repo branch, (which was all the work I had done since creating the new branch) I tried to resolve this using Plastic, These are the files I want, but plastic just threw error saying it couldn't resolve.. and that's because it had already over written those files in the project with the changes to the ones from the latest new branch and working space, while still having a log of the changes it was tracking..

both times Plastic on its own changed my work space files with out permission, being asked to do so or even telling me at all that it was doing it.. Plastic & Unity is the only software that has access to these folders directly, everything else goes to another project folder and is imported to unity project from there manually.. both times Plastic ran weeks as it was supposed to, even in this case all the previous branches etc all work I can switch my work space and everything is as it should be.

I really don't want to use Plastic anymore.. I'm burnt on this, generally when something breaks I can say, "I did this",
and I probably shouldn't had, or I can trace down the "why" it happened, If I can blame myself it makes me feel stupid but I live and learn.. this isn't a me thing.. I just really want a easy and safe way to version control my project
on the cloud incase my laptop is broken or stolen or I break something.. simple

 

LoL I'm realizing the extent of this last problem is worse then I thought.. it didn't revert to the last workspace
it reverted some where in between the last active work space / branch when I created it and the previous workspace /branch, I know that maybe hard to understand, but I checked in the branch before after finishing specific changes,
created a new branch and started new tasks, the project now has for instance a script that was completely finished
and checked in as part of the last branch, that is missing more then half the functionality, so this version has none of the new changes made on this branch/workspace and only half the changes made on the previous branch.. I'm so confused this changes were updated checked in, a new branch was created and work space switched and those changes worked and functioned while I worked on the new branch but now... man F*** plastic

 

I appreciate you taking the time to break down the events of what happened. I won't ask that you continue to use a tool that you don't feel confident with and I'm so sorry that you experienced this level of frustration.

If you do still have them on your local machine, I'd be very interested to look through your Plastic logs with the team to see if we can identify what might have happened. You can find your logs folder in your
plastic4 directory (under $HOME/.plastic4 on Linux/Mac systems). If you'd be willing to zip them up and send them to me as a sort of cathartic farewell to the tool, then it could help to figure out just what happened so that we can make sure that something like this never happens again.

 

I couldn't find the files on my system, I have a full system back up on the cloud though and I believe I will have a copy there of the logs (which would had just been included with everything else), I'll check after my system finish its current task.

I probably sound like a prick, so I'd like to take a moment to say this:

I like Plastic, It's really cool software, I know a lot better developers then me have probably put in a massive amount
of work to make it what it is, and I'm really sorry if I offend anyone, I am just frustraited, I don't think I ever in more then a decade of using unity have came to the forums and posted anything. so it says something to the level of frustration.
Plastic is more then what I need or want when working in unity, I just want a simple repo and I'm gonna switch to something else.
that being said the primary appeal for collab and plastic was the ability to manage and checkin right in the editor..
if going forward you guys decide to make a simple subversion cloud based repo that doesn't have all these "team based" features and is more focused on the lone wolf building and learning on their own, I'd be happy to pay for the service.

 

Thank you for checking your back up when you get the chance.

For what it's worth, I don't think you're being a prick. You're upset at the work lost, and I get that. That's why I want to find out what happened so that we can find a solution.

We have been hearing from users like you who feel that Plastic offers way more features than they've needed, especially compared to Collab, which can complicate things quickly. Our initial focus after the acquisition was to work on getting Plastic SCM's Editor integration to be as seamless as possible. But we do plan to improve the whole onboarding process so that simpler workflows can be tailored to, like what you're asking for. We want to make the Plastic Unity Editor integration work for all workflow types, whether you're with a huge team or working on your own.

 

I totally agree with you. Collaborate was very successful. The current prblem for me, each time i open Unity, if my IP address has changed i have to add my ip to whitelist on Plastic SCM cloud. Just headache nothing else for me.

 

How my transfer to plasticscm went:
- New packages that came with the transfer broke my unity project I've been working on for 5 months without any problems with collaborate before. Spent 2 days overreacting and being depressed to find out it was caused by these new packages.

- 4 days after I finally calmed down and got motivation back to work on my hobby I found out my plasticscm account has been suspended without any given reason.

Thanks for driving me further into depressiong in these very bad times and taking away a place where I can meditate at, PlasticSCM.

 

Just throwing my two cents into here.

I don't like SCM either. Granted, I'm a self-taught programmer with very little experience with version control software. Maybe my difficulties are partially my own fault.

I tried bouncing my project into the cloud using Gluon (what I presume is the simplified software), and I got a bunch of errors. It turns out if you move an asset file into a new folder, but then move it back to its original folder, it confuses Plastic. When I finally managed to do a checkin without errors, I tried downloading the project on another machine (specifically, updating the project files). It seemed to copy most of the files correctly, but many prefab references were broken in my Scene. I decided to delete the whole assets folder and copy it over manually.

Like I said, maybe it's user error. But I find Plastic SCM to be quite frustrating and overcomplicated to use. I really miss Collab. Right now I'm using Dropbox to sync my projects.

 

I HEAVILY dislike Plastic. It's an overly complicated software that replaced a perfectly fine, in-engine solution for sharing and moving projects, and according to the above commenters, it's apparently filled with bugs.

 

Collaborate met the needs of many a small team or solo indie developer, especially when used in conjunction with Cloud Build. The problem is the "Pro" programmers complained about the lack of "branching" and Unity listened to these "pros". I am quite worried now as we are in the midst of a forced migration that isn't working (Unity's cloud systems are down, no migration tool showing up, etc)*. They seem to have forgotten (or ditched?) the mantra "democratizing game dev". It's now reversing course and narrowing the field to cater to the bigger teams.

*Was eventually all fixed.

 

This Exactly! Give us the option to use Either Plastic or Collaborate. For some projects, Plastic may be needed, but for small projects on small teams where branching isn't needed, Plastic is harder to use, harder to understand, harder to work with, and overall a worse option in just about every way. Why exactly are we forced to use Plastic? Why not give us the choice of which one to use? This is the most frustrating part of all of this. If we had a choice I wouldn't have a problem with it but this forced migration stuff is just screwing project after project and is seriously making me reconsider ever using Unity again in the future.

 

Plastic has already caused me multiple problems like a popup comes up instantly with an error after saving a prefab or a bloat of errors logging in console

 

Not sure what the issue is, you can still simply push/pull just like with collab. you dont have to use branches or any "advanced" features? If you just spend 10 minutes watching an intro video you learn enough about plastic to get started and move on with your day.

That being said, I've also experienced some issues with plastic that Im putting down to being a new integration.

 

I am sorry but Collaborate, while being a "lightweight" solution, still managed to accommodate the needs of most developers. it had its own bugs, but nothing like this. For example, I am seeing files in Pending Changes that when I open with Diff it says the file in my workspace and the file in the last revision are identical.
Furthermore It has a terrible ignore system called "private" files. If I want to ignore these files I don't want them to appear in my SVN. That's what ignoring means. But they still are there in the Added and Private files dropdown. That's just bad design.


And to people saying this was necessary because Collaborate lacked branching and what not, if you really needed those features you would have established a third party SVN like git, not force it on everyone else.

 

Sadly, it is far from a new integration. It's just new for Unity to screw up.

They had publicly mentioned the same team behind collab would not be working with Plastic (and shouldn't, for so many reasons, but as a freebie...making tens of promises and only coming back with shutting the whole thing down after so many years). A lie that became quite transparent.

Collaborate would have been phenomenal if the competency and promises behind it existed, but the team was over their head then and that hasn't changed with Plastic.

 

For the most part, you are correct, though it took an entire work day in the end to go through a few Unity videos, docs, and their [not 10 minutes long] webinar, then go through all our projects, make sure archived projects were backed up locally (since Unity will be deleting them in May), and learning all the other caveats, like reconfiguring cloud build for every project and those projects' every build target, etc. And I'm not done yet, as we have a launched and continually supported project that is code-frozen to 2018.4 and cannot be upgraded higher than that. So that means setting up the external Plastic SCM client and whatever implications that comes with.

Thing is, I have used SVN and Perforce in the past (years ago), which means this was all not-quite-as-new to me as it sure is for some. And yet, after migrating my first project, I was faced with a list of "private and added" files that I have no idea what to do with or why they are under that category. Should I check them and commit them? Should I not? Why? Why not? What does Private mean? Couldn't really find the answers after much more than 10 minutes of digging. Collaborate hid that stuff from us. Unity might want to consider adding a "Simple" mode to the Plastic plugin.

So imagine what it must be like for users who's only exposure to version control was Collaborate. I'm ranting in solidarity with them. Oh and can we talk about the new storage costs? Surprise!

 

The whole damned thing. Stop acting like this is one off. You forced me and hundreds if not thousands onto a wonky version control system. And then act all innocent like OMG..an error..send a bug report.. Eff no!.. I have continual timeout errors telling me to set my server and client configs. Let me at the server.. I will config it all right with a size ten cowboy boot. The Changsets in the incoming panel are not viewable when you press the View button. Instead some obscure progress bar that is dark grey blue on a dark grey interface with a black background keeps cycling and an error box pops up every two to six cycles telling me to config the server and client so they won't timeout at 3016 milliseconds. I cannot change my workspace to the latest changeset from my teammate and am 17 behind after moving and dealing with this my first day back at the job..and not working nor making a dime. Unity owes folks some money for this./ There should be some kind of restitution for being stupid with others working projects. This isn;t kindergarten or script kiddie gamer forums. Folks do serious work with this software and have hard deadlines and a paycheque that depends on it working..

 

This.. especially the last sentence. We get enterprise C# guys come in and demand tools that they are familiar with in their console driven class and inheritance world and are turninga rapid application and prototyping suite of tools into the same bloated, over-jargoned tidbitted mess that is the MS docs and API explanations and use. They will try to break the brilliant component system to cram their old ways in..then after a year of griping and not beiong the gamer dstar they leave and their gripes fopr all their tools and interfaces and delegates and what not that just makes it all more complicated than needs be. Example. Look for CSV parsing in Unity and just CSV parsing thru stackexchange. These guys are regex-ing and dynamic LINQ-ing and cpnvoluting thru embedded loops. The Unity guy answered in two lines of code. It worked just dandy without all the comp sci hoop jumping every last corner case in the universe being handled while nothing gets done..

 

There is no way to get the changesets that are shown. There is no button. Right clicking gets some options which seem promising till the error dialogue tells me the timeout exceed 3000ms and I need to configure the server!!@!!@ and client settings..nowhere in Unity to be found.

 

I did this 6 weeks after this assurance to the community. I am on a hard deadline after spending seven days moving. I open Unity and this nightmare started at 9am this morning. I am still here trying to get changesets that have been piling up all day from others. Should I tell them not to pay me as I haven;t done a damned thing all day? I can't do anything without getting changesets and every time I am in the Plastic window I keep getting timewout errors every 10 seconds telling me to config a server and client..neither of which have any such configurator..is this some godanged secret config text file you have to read the manual to find and then type something in??..or you have to have an external app to do it? Either way..garbage.

 

@ippdev ... Man have I EVER shared the same sentiment several times dealing with Unity editor & service issues. I would love to be more chipper and supportive but Unity has wronged me so many times, especially the version control, that I have no energy left to not return my animosity.
Even though I do prefer plastic over collab, I totally understand where you're coming from here, as I'm sure anyone who has witnessed the flow of things over the years does.

With the same people at Unity pretending to work on improvements and resolutions and throwing unbacked apologies for the insane time and money drains these issues cause without having half a clue what kind of damage it actually does to developers.

On top of it the communication is delayed by months, even years and require us to follow up instead of being given any quality messaging from their teams. Which leaves us wondering if they'll improve things or make them worse, or deprecate things we invested heavily into.

Total Crapshow.

 

Plastic is not garbage, however it is understandable how it can appear like a nightmare to people who have only experienced in the oversimplified process of Collaborate.

I love Collaborate and how easy it made ramping up junior or amateur team members, but simply put, after the initial teething and learning issues, Plastic is by far a better option.

 

I can run GitBash by command line. It is not a lack of knowledge about these processes. It is just garbage sottware that throws constant timeout errors, asks me to config the server I have no access to to avoid timeouts and will not even load itself into a new fresh empty project without claiming I altered files and have to resolve conflicts before proceeding..and won't even indicate which files out of 7895 I have to check...when i touched nothing. How is that not garbage? I am at 700 dollars loss of income currently and expect that to climb today as i fuilly expect support to be as slack as the applications integration into a Unity based workflow.

 

I didn't mean you in particular.
There are so many amateur and junior users of Unity that have exactly the problem I mentioned.

I am mostly using the editor version of Plastic and works like a charm,
but I have some issues with the client.

One of the issues I had with the client, was that I had downloaded the wrong client type by mistake, and I had some similar issues like what you describe.

Are you sure you have downloaded the Cloud version of SCM client?

https://www.plasticscm.com/download

Also Unity generates/"updates" some local versions of files that are mostly about editor configuration.
Using Collaborate these were ignored by default.

Now some of these appear in Plastic as updated, and usually found in a separate, "Private" segment that does not need to be pushed to the server.



In this same section you may find some files that you had not pushed to the server before the migration. Others didn't move to that section. In which case a conflict appeared, but it was easy to resolve it, and move on.

Similar conflicts sometimes appeared in Collaborate. The way to resolve them is not too different in Plastic.

 

Also Plastic is clearly showing which files are doing what.

Just make sure you are looking at the correct tab. "Incoming Changes" where they are separated clearly in categories and color coded you can see what is going on. and decide for each file separately, or in bulk what to do with them.

 

After round and round with them it was their database that did not migrate my status properly and was denying me access. But come on..if that is the case why get a continuous dialog stating timeout error?? It should clearly state I do not have permission and I have some avenue to channel my grief to get some resolution to occur. it is a bitch sitting there knowing your way around dozens of complex API's and this app tells me nothing useful but just instead blocks me and has me play email tag with HQ.. That is bogus. I would not let software out under my purview with this type of glaring WTF's happening. Every user need to know from an error dialogue just how to pursue the issue. Telling me from a UI in Unity that I have to config a server and/or client to resolve my problem and having no such animal in Unity reeks IMHO.

BTW..thanks for your assistance and "calming" presence. My frikkin' wig was on fire about his. I had just spent seven day packing, moving, unpacking, the dev computer did not like the move and kept shutting down. Two days later I got it working and opened Unity to work and it forced me to upgrade to Plastic and kaboom. I could no longer make an income. They ain't gonna pay me the 750 bucks lost by their clerical error either. So I will just eat it and suck it up and mosey on out.

 

I would feel as frustrated. I have a short fuse LOL
Their instructions and errors are not very clear sometimes.

Enjoy not having to wait 20 minutes for Collaborate to check each and every file in your project every time Unity starts

 

I 100% agree. Initially it worked accetably for the first projects, delaying only a few days because it would automatically upgrade the project to plastic scm on one machine, but on the others, the project wouldn't automatically update to platic scm. The plasticscm button in windows was nowhere to be found. This caused a lot of troubles with one of our projects, which we would've lost if we didn't have it stored locally. I tried installing plasticSCM by hand on the machine without the automatic upgrade. It was a painfully complicated process to try and sync a repository with the unity project, and when I finally managed to do it, it just synced everything badly. it dumped the files in the repo where the existing ,but unsynced, project was. Now all I had was a bunch of duplicate scripts and lots of errors. In the end I had to delete everything and hope I'll be able to somehow sync the project from the main machine. I've been using collaborate for a long time with these projects and it worked like a charm.

Another problem: I had another project which was synced just well, had plastic on both machines, and everything was working allright. I opened the project on the secondary machine and synced. It was almost ok, some script references were lost but not that much work to be redone. The problem is that when I closed the project, WITHOUT syncing ANY NEW CHANGE, and tried to open it again, it threw a bunch of errors about the render pipeline not importing successfully, and then all the materials and textures were messed up, probably reimporting some stuff would have done the job but that's already too much work and time lost because of Plastic. So I thought, alright the last sync of the project had everything working allright, reverting to that should do the trick. But guess what, there's no button to revert to a previous save, right clicking on them only displays the option to "diff with [some number]" which will open the plastic scm app, and display a bunch of stuff.

Basically plastic scm is unusable as of now, 16.04.2022, the upgrade doesn't occur automatically a lot of the times, and every syncing of plastic project brings all kinds of unexpected errors and lost work.

I was more than happy with collaborate. At fist when it upgraded to plastic I was open to it, and it just seemed to work like the old collab, with some new features, but using it more, I realized how bad and time wasting it really is.

ADVICE: have a backup of any project you sync with plastic scm! You'll need it sooner or later

Also if anyone finds another method/plugin to sync unity projects please let me know, I really don't want to have to upload the whole project to a cloud service everytime I work on it

 

With years of them claiming they would fix it . Our team went through hell with Collab, investing hundreds and hundreds of hours of tools into the API integrations into other services/features and that grind of hell with all the bugs and service issues was knowingly coming to an end. Once they started mentioning Plastic more often I knew they were going to try to obtain something different and Collab was never going to get a single promise (of the hundreds) from over the years. We immediately started working on a switch and cutting our losses.

The "checking for changes" no longer being an issue was a godsend but the simplicity loss was definitely unfortunate for our artist/designer.

I don't think Plastic is bad, but I REFUSE to use any integration into Unity's editor for it because they can't get their editor under wraps either. It's just never-ending.

For large projects, Plastic feels a lot better but there's been recent service issues with it now that Unity runs the show, and their communication has been the exact same as it was for Collab. They don't realize the entire service is down until hours after people are posting about it.

Collab wasn't the problem. Plastic isn't the problem. Unity is unfortunately the problem, and they continue to go down weird paths that break user's trust.

LOL I just brought this up recently to people that I suspect one day Unity will fumble something and lose everyone's commits. Definitely keeping a local copy on more than one machine of everything.

 

Plastic SCM thanks for integrating in unity you ruined our projects. Every change in unity is taking a decade at least collaborate was doing its job well. I cannot create a new work space. I cannot pull projects from cloud. I cannot push changes to cloud since (Connection reset by peer Error occurs ) .

 

my problem is basically the same as the guy above me

 

Plastic SCM also deleted some of my prefabs. That is the problem with proprietary software. The user doesn't control the software. The software controls the user. Unity simply forced us to use Plastic SCM, and we were forced to migrate to it.

Plastic SCM doesn't even let me build for Windows when it is enabled. I actually had to disable/remove Version Control and could then successfully build for Windows!

 

I really ANGRY with Unity. F***ing Plastic!

 

It is super easy to do all these. In fact a lot easier than with Collab.
Regarding your connection reset issue contact them and they will help resolve this.

It has happened to some people btu it can be fixed very easy. Just contact them.
Submit a support ticket.

 

Plastic does NOT delete anything.
Chances are you have done something wrong.

This post here is helpful.
https://forum.unity.com/threads/res...ter-collaborate-upgrade.1240720/#post-8056550

For those having a problem with Plastic and Cloud Build follow these instructions:

https://support.unity.com/hc/en-us/...d-after-migrating-from-Collaborate-to-Plastic

It is super easy to fix.

 

FYI, I made a test project using PlasticSCM (Unity built-in Version Control package), from scratch. I'm getting the same Connection reset by peer error message, but only if my changes are bigger than ~80 megabytes.

When I added the Fmod asset to my project I had to submit it in 11 pieces to go though (it has a bunch of DLLs).

Bug reported, will insert issue number as soon as I get one.

 

The switch from Collab to Plastic has been an unmitigated disaster. The switch happened in the middle of a work week for my team and without warning (we didn't receive any emails other than an email on the day that a switch has happened), there was no information in Collab itself that it will soon become deprecated, nor was there information in the package manager. Pointing to the forum posts about it is akin to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy bit where the Vogons tell humans that Earth demolition plans were available at alpha centauri for 200 years prior and it's their fault they didn't complain...

Now to the actual issues:

Every now and then, sometimes a couple times a day, when baking lightmaps plastic decides to mark thousands of files in the project as private and removes them from the repo with the next push - even if you only push the files you changed, not the private files. The only solution I've found so far is to not push anything and remove the .plastic folder, open the Plastic SCM app with the --configure parameter and point the repo at the folder all over again, and then sync with the repo.

This sometimes coincides with another issue that on occasion a lot of files in the project disappear from the Unity project view (but still exist in the folder and are versioned by plastic and are not marked as private) and the only solution to fix this is to reimport the entire project.

Sometimes junk files in the project with *.private* in them remain and have to be removed manually.

Sometimes Plastic (or the package manager?) creates Library and Temp folders inside of the package cache folders and then we get errors about immutable folders not having .meta files. (we did not have this issue prior to switching from Collab, and unity versions have not changed since then too).

We get scene conflicts even tho only prefabs that exist in those scenes changed and no one pushed the entire scene file. We also have entire scene conflicts even tho one user only added a single object to the scene.

On Linux the Diff button or "Launch Plastic SCM" does nothing/redirects to the window that asks to download plastic as Plastic does not detect the installed Plastic SCM.

Showing changed files as deleted/added like in the case of lightmaps but sometimes other files is incredibly confusing, stressful and annoying as people in the team think they've deleted a lot of important files when it happens.

When a conflict happens the resolution language is confusing to most users - a simple "choose mine/choose theirs/diff" like in Collab was far better.

There is no easy way to right click a single file to open that file's history to bring it to a previous revision.

I'd rather be back with Collab that worked perfectly by the point it was shut down... All these issues have literally added days of work...

 

Cons.

1. Zero useful documentation from Unity side (again for the umpteenth time), or it’s well hidden (for the umpteenth time)
2. Complicated compared to collab. Installation, usage and integration with cloud.
3. Cloud integration has become a painful experience.

The One Pro.

1. faster than collab.

 

Try adding

<Upload_SendDataThreadCount>1</Upload_SendDataThreadCount>

To plastic's client.conf.

Other than that Unity / Codice know about this issue for at least a year, they’ve attempted to fix it more than once, but it seems they can’t. Adding that line helps a lot though.

 

I agree with the OP. Collab was so easy to use sad to see it go. 2 weeks with Plastic and I'm frustrated with all the horribly written descriptions and process they do. If would have been nice if they also had some use with the collab icons on the top bar.
On a side note the migration was terrible. You migrated about 60% of my project and did not honor me all the space I had with Collab.

 

Just skimmed thread.

Make sure when you give Unity feedback please always keep it professional / polite, and provide as much information as possible. I understand some people are jaded but I have been through just as much, and know that calm feedback always wins in the end!

Cheers!

 

have used plastic scm in one project now, definitely wont use again..(if i can decide)
reasons:
- really complicated to use general (if you are used to simple commits on sourcetree/github desktop)
- weird terminology (again due to being in familiar with "regular git" terms)
- error messages are not clear
- weird issues: i couldn't checkout branch due to "pending changes", but my pending changes list was empty, i dont even know what was the solution to the issue, but pulling changes in plastic gluon UI fixed it (and somehow it changed branch in plastic scm client also, even though i never touched any branch stuff on both)
- comments from other users "i've never managed to make the builtin plastic scm work" (the one inside unity)
- feels like files are sometimes automatically checked out and locked? (i guess this can be useful, and maybe due to my ignorance, but it causes issues so easily that i'd home theres some way to avoid it..)
- couldn't unlock some files in plastic scm (Cant remember what was the issue, or maybe they were not listed there as locked, had to unlock it from commandline)
- it installs all kind of extra background services that are always running
- UI color decisions seems weird, selected row is kind of red (which makes it looks like there is something wrong here, as in error color)
- no alternate row colors like sourcetree (it would help reading/differentiating long rows)
- mouseover color is almost white, and the text is white also.. how to see text then?
- ui/ux: what is my current branch and checked out commit? (maybe its the bolded number, but not clear)
- horizontal branch explorer, not sure how well thats going to work if you have really long history? (compared to regular vertical lists)

all of that is just a quick list from memory, after using it probably less than 2hrs in total time..

*new stuff:
- change set window doesn't show all/older commits (default is 1 month)?
- "show extended information" button doesn't hide the window, need to close it manually
- "creation date" its unclear what does that mean, is that the date of commit of some other branch creation original date?

 

Just came here to add that PlasticSCM is terrible and completely unusable. Versioning control has never been in a worse state for Unity. I’m really disappointed they gave up on Collab for this nonsense

 

I feel like Gluon and the Unity plugin are undercooked.

I use the normal PlasticSCM client, and apart from the upload issue that is solved by editing the config, I'm fairly happy with Plastic.

It works, the basic stuff are fairly easy to do and the few times I needed to do something more complex, it was slightly awkward to do, but doable.

Plus, by not running it as a Unity plugin, it adds zero overhead when working with Unity, since it's a completely separate program (that is fast to start and only needs like a few seconds to scan for changes) that you open when you want to take or commit new changes and you could not even run otherwise.

 

Just don't revert your project and then make any changes otherwise you get this lovely message

 

It's just making sure you don't lose your changes. You need to either commit your changes, or undo them before changing to another changeset. I think there is a setting somewhere (at least on the client, I don't know about the plugin) to have it allow you anyway.