Samples in Packages - Manual Setup

Thank you Ethan. As soon as I can move to Unity 2019.1 will jump into this.

 

It took me a long time to figure out why this wasn't working for me. As it turns out, you need to spell samples with a lower-case s, so not upper-case like in your example

Code (CSharp):

1.   "samples": [

 

is this the only way assets like prefabs can be brought into projects from a package? or just the recommended way? what other options are there?

 

Sorry I should have elaborated more. I was hoping to design packages that would extend the create menu for the scene/hierarchy as cleanly as possible. For example, Unity offers menu options for creating UI objects that automatically add a canvas if there isn't one already, and the same for an event system. But the prefabs of those exact objects aren't in the assets folder because they shouldn't be. They're almost like "read only" prefabs that are just there to provide tools for developers.

With my own package, I'd like to refer to prefabed objects that would be instantiated via editor scripts without needing to import those originals into the assets folder. Basically to have the same set up and Unity's own basic game objects.

Is this something that can be done or will be considered for the package manager? I know I can just create plain game objects and add components to them but sometimes we need sprite references and other stuff that we don't necessarily want in the assets folder but in the packages folder.

 

Is there a way to flatten the sample folder path? Imagine I have a package with a template structure inside a 'WebGLTemplates' folder. My custom Template only appears in Player Settings if my WebGLTemplates folder is located in "Assets/WebGLTemplates/MyTemplate", but the Package Manager imports assets as follows:
"Assets/Samples/Package Name/Version/WebGLTemplates/.....
Is there a solution to solve that issue?

 

That's a Unity requirement.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-templates.html

See "Structure of a WebGL Template" section.

 

As commented in this thread
https://forum.unity.com/threads/webgltemplates-folder-in-packages.678823/
WebGLTemplates location is hard-coded.

I'll open a bug report

 

Reported - 1157275
Thanks

 

Thanks for response! I created a bug report --> https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?1157287_a5u6jn4stvnt4b9h
But nevertheless I still struggling with the question: How can I put assets into special folders like Plugins or Editor? With *.unitypackage file export/import behaves exactly how it should. Would be great if you could export Assets the old fashion way but with a "new" package as a result. Or maybe extracting assets into an existing package.

 

Oh, didn't see that @De-Panther already opened a thread regarding that topic!

 

Any chance of having extra dependencies related to Samples?

For example, I don't want my actual package to need Unity.ugui as a dependency but the sample will need it?

 

Sweet, didn't think about client.add haha.

That'll be cool to have it supported out the box though.

 

I have this same requirement.

Also I think that it's annoying that when we click the import button it doesn't show the preview window to see what are we going to import and it starts automatically. I expected the same behaviour as when you are importing a unitypackage.

 

Worth noting in 2019.3 the UI bugs out, with it showing both Samples and Dependencies in the same place. Not sure if this just bug with Unity Dependencies in 2019.3, or bug with way your handling samples?

 

@okcompute_unity

Is this 'samples' approach required for prefabs too? Is it on the roadmap to be able to drag prefabs from a custom package into my scene (see gif) ?

 

@okcompute_unity

I cannot drag into the Assets folder. The same issue occurs for fbx assets; I cannot drag from Packages folder into scene or Assets

 

@okcompute_unity I cannot drag materials and textures either, does this mean it is not a Prefab specific issue?

 

@okcompute_unity 2019.1.8f1

 

Ok, issue 1169200 created. Two-col layout works fine for now. Thanks

 

When developing custom package, folder named `Samples~` would be ignored by Unity importer as hidden asset making it difficulty to actually develop sample code/assets (since development is done in some Unity project anyway). The only workaround for now is renaming the folder back and forth to comply with naming. What is the typical workflow expected for samples development?

Removing `~` from samples folder name and having assembly definition file in the samples folder allows to import sample via package manager, but after importing there is GUID conflict for sample files as same GUID is present in package and imported sample (I assume that's why samples folder name should be hidden asset).

 

Hello @cassandraL,

Many thanks for the answer and great to know you are working on that!

By "pushing the new package version" do you mean pushing it to be available via package manager or pushing it to git branch? Asking as I'm trying to understand best practices for package development setup of git repository and would be good to know how Unity team does it. I've seen some people do one branch for Unity project and another one for package while others do only one branch with package itself. For second option `Samples~` problem becomes a thing and this is where my initial question came from.

 

Hello @cassandraL,
Great, thank you very much for the explanation!

 

Use soft link and ignore linked directory of `Samples~` in your ignore file of VCS would be a workaround of this issue.

Code (csharp):

1. ln -s Samples~ Samples # and ignore Samples in .gitignore

 

Just wanted to say I found this fantastic repo https://github.com/TrismegistusDevelopment/unity-package-manager-ci

It will automatically create upm-ready package branch whenever you push to your master repo. A little complicated to set up (for me at least) but it works great. I created a pull request to solve this issue: https://github.com/TrismegistusDevelopment/unity-package-manager-ci/pull/2. With that change you can maintain a "Samples" folder in your master branch and the build system will automatically rename it to "Samples~" before it pushes to the UPM branch.

 

I write a tutorial about creating the upm branch with GitHub Actions, it will handle the Sample folder as well.
https://medium.com/openupm/how-to-maintain-upm-package-part-1-7b4daf88d4c4

 

Nice! Thank you.

 

Kind of a weird special case here, but this will invariably happen while developing a package:

- During development, we include the Code+Assets as a local package in the PackageManager / manifest.json.
- We also remove the ~ from the "Samples~" folder: "Samples"
- When we now drag a regular Texture "MyTexture.png" from /Assets into /Packages/MyPackage/Samples/MySample, it shows up as expected, and the Windows explorer correctly shows "MyTexture.png.meta" with the correct settings. BUT:
- When we now change the Max Size in the import settings of that texture to say 32, and apply, the Metafile suddenly gets renamed to "mytexture.png.meta", and the name in Unity also changes to "mytexture". The texture itself is still named "MyTexture.png".
- This also generates the Console error "Refresh case sensitivity failure. Asset: Packages/com.nmy.huba/Samples/MySample/mytexture.png ; Metafile: Packages/com.nmy.huba/Samples/MySample/mytexture.png.meta" (that message shows "mytexture.png", but Windows explorer does show it as the original "MyTexture.png"

Windows 10
Unity 2019.2.10f1
Package Manager UI 2.2.0

 

@Wolfram I've been experienced with something similar on Windows OS. It sounds a bug.

 

"Samples" folder is good to start. However, can we have an option to rename that Samples folder with a custom name like "Assets/FOO/[package-name]/[version_number]/[example_directory]" ??
Our team needs to rename it with "Documentation" because our documentation is a folder with multiple files.

 

Been experimenting with custom packages, is there a way to move / specify where a sample / sub folder of the sample goes ?

My use case is that I've a localization system that fetches languages files from StreamingAssets, is there a way for me to have a file (a basic .json language file for exemple) go there ?

Thanks !

 

1. I have same question.
Meanwhile
This case you will catch some way on scene load or On initialization load events. and move it with C# File class.
Use some kind of editor assembly of scripts logic to workaround it for now.
2. Can you add some callback event "OnImportSamplePreprocessor" & "OnImportSamplePostprocessor" to create our logic after and before the importings.
Thanks