Request for adding a backup system for a unity project.

I, rather everyone would really appreciate that unity makes a backup system of the project. Unity Collaborate is quite good, but it has a memory limit, which a huge barrier. Other solutions like GitHub also has a memory limit. I am not even done with half of my project when I was hit with the 'memory over' message from GitHub.

Some tips:
1. The backup system should not contain a memory limit.
2. It should be easy to set up and use.

 

Welcome to the forums.

In this backup system you're envisioning, where would these backups physically exist? On the user's computer? In the cloud? If you're suggesting Unity should host it, is it free? If not, how much should they charge for unlimited storage? What would stop someone from creating a dummy Unity project and having it back up their entire computer every night?

The simple fact of the matter is that git (whether you're using GitHub, BitBucket, or any similar service) is easy to setup once you know what you're doing, and the free tier should be plenty for a solo developer working on a project. If you're running out of space in your repo this early in your project, chances are you're doing something wrong with what you're committing.

 

There are plenty of services that don't have a limit but none of them are going to be free because hosting files in a way that guarantees they won't disappear if one device fails and providing bandwidth for downloading/uploading them is not free.

In fact in the case of GitHub it's $5 per month per pack of 50 GB of bandwidth and 50 GB of storage. If that's too expensive there are plenty of alternatives out there but if the most you can afford is free you're going to find that few if any exist beyond a few gigabytes.

https://docs.github.com/en/billing/...rage/about-billing-for-git-large-file-storage

 

I have an idea. I don't know if it would work, but the backup could be stored as a text file or something. I hope I am not sounding dumb.

 

Azure DevOps is a free version control host that has no storage limit, as far as I'm aware.

 

Not dumb. Just... not really clear on how version control works. With code, the diff between two files will be what gets stored in a commit, so it's not like it's making a duplicate of every file in your project every time you push a commit. If you're doing crazy stuff like changing your indent level for the whole document every time, then sure, that becomes a problem, but otherwise, code files aren't the problem.

What does become a problem are binary files that aren't interpreted as text. Images, models, audio files... if these files are changing frequently, and you're committing them frequently, you're going to run out of space quickly. Likewise, if you're storing your originals (PSD files are a big one) in your repository, that's going to eat up a ton of space.

We use Git LFS (Large File Storage) to assist with this kind of thing at my job, but since I didn't set that up or really have to do anything with it past enabling it when cloning the repo onto a new machine, I can't say much more about it.

 

I have used Git LFS, that's what I am using now and got the memory issue. But now what I did is I moved the repository to the assets folder, and not the whole project, which grant me a lot of memory.

 

Did you put folders like "library" on ignore?
You do not need to commit those folders to github because unity will recreate the files if you ever check out the project on another pc. That should save you a lot of storage space on github.

You could also very easily create your own .bat-File to zip a version of your project on a regular basis.

And finally you could install your own git server: https://gitea.io/
But of course you would need to backup that too.

 

Yes, now I am backing up the Assets folder instead of the whole project. Thanks for your concern