• Code Hosting and Reviews

   

  Like many software companies, Unity Technologies has run through a few different version control systems.  In the beginning, there was no version control.  Eventually the first Unity Ninjas began using CVS, and eventually Subversion. About a year ago, we started to investigate distributed version control systems and eventually settled on Mercurial.  Now all of our source code is versioned in Mercurial, except for our public Mono, MonoDevelop, and Boo-related repositories on GitHub.
• Why Mercurial?

• At work we switched to Mercurial almost two months ago. Like Richard says, it was time to stop using Subversion.
• Preemptive warning: I’ve only ever used CVS, SourceSafe, Subversion, git and Mercurial as source contro systems (never used Perforce). I never really used a code review tool before Kiln. Everything below might be non-issues in other tools/systems, or not suitable for different setups/workflows!

• you’ll now get a .meta file
• set Asset Serialization to Force Text. Unity saves out assets like prefabs and scenes as binary files by default, which means you can’t merge or diff them; this setting makes Unity save prefabs and scenes (and some other things) as text files instead.
• Using Perforce
• The major issue here is that Perforce uses your file system’s read-only flag to lock files
• but Unity doesn’t really care about that flag
• This easily leads to missed check-ins
• work around
• first diff the entire Assets and ProjectSettings folders
• Using Mercurial
• Mercurial is a distributed version control system
• Mercurial (shorthand: hg) has so far beaten the pants off of Perforce.
• you don’t have to check anything out.
• and it effectively tracks your changes for you
• Another benefit is the ease with which you can create new repositories
• In a VCS like Perforce you have a central server
• he server is a complex piece of software with a ton of configuration and security options… setting one up is kind of a PITA
• By contrast, an hg repository is just a folder on your computer
• tag the folder as a repository
• You’re done
• Ignored Files
• When you’re using Meta Files, you do not want to put the Library folder under VCS
• Sharing and Backup
• Enter Bitbucket!
• • Github only hosts git, while Bitbucket hosts both git and hg
   
  • Github is free only for public repositories, while Bitbucket also offers free private repositories

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• Asset Server is Unity’s own version control product. It sits on top of a PostgreSQL database and can be setup easily on many platforms.
• it was very easy to administer and add project-specific user privileges
• Asset Server is integrated nicely into the Unity UI
• I have already noticed some rather large features missing in Asset Server that are available in other version control systems
• branch/tag/fork
• it might be ok for personal use and small projects
• .meta file
• “Text-based scene/prefab/… format
• it’s free
• Unity don’t seem to currently have any plans on the roadmap to integrate it into the Unity UI
• A lot of people seem to like using Asset Server since it is fully integrated in the Unity UI and as such, is possibly better for workflow
• We’ve been using perforce as an external vcs with Unity for a few months. It suffers from very similar basic issues as subversion. We used early versions of the perforce ‘integration’ to largely get round the dreaded ‘missing meta file’ problems, but it’s still far from fool proof.

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• So, what’s wrong with Subversion?
• Committing = publishing
• Merges
• File system operations
• What I’m using instead
• I’ve switched to Git. It solves all of the above problems, as well as just generally being much, much faster.
• Distributed version control
• Why it’s better
• If you want to have a central, authoritative repository, you can still do that
• you have to choose to do so
• Every developer’s working copy is a private branch
• I’m using Git Extensions as a general Windows-based Git UI, and it includes Visual Studio integration
• There’s a little bit more terminology to learn – staging, pushing and pulling, rebasing, and so on – but it’s not that big a deal, and most of it’s intuitive.
• Why it’s not
• There are a couple of things I can see might be problems for people.
• or by waiting for Git to mature a little more
• Git’s speed barely drops for very large projects.
• Secondly, because Git tracks files by their content rather than by their path information, it’s sometimes difficult to keep tracking history for binary files.
• but occasionally it can break.
• Thirdly, on the topic of binary files
• locking files to make sure that at least people won’t waste time making changes that can’t be merged – but that’s not something you can do out of the box with Git, as there’s no authority that can tell you which files are and are not locked
• Per-file locking is part of a more general issue, which is that Git doesn’t have much in the way of an access control mechanism
• work around this by simply using multiple repositories
• while Git is fine for source code, it’s not the right place to keep assets – you might be better off using a system more deliberately designed for assets, like Alienbrain.

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• AssetCloud: Nestable,
  merge-able, versioned, server-based
  asset management for Unity.
  Free to use during Beta!

• if you’ve never used version control software, or perhaps don’t even know what version control is at all, this article is for you.
• Resources to start you out
• Resources to start you out
• Perforce
• Perforce – you can use perforce without a license for 2 users and 5 client workspaces, which is decent enough for a solo project to learn on.
• Mercurial – Free, uses distributed version control, no server necessary
• Mercurial
• Git – also
• • Git – also free and uses distributed version control
   
  • TortoiseSVN –  a free standalone SVN client for Windows, but it doesn’t have its own gui, you just use it through Windows Explorer.
   
  • Bazaar – Doesn’t require any server or external tools, very easy to pick up and use with no previous VCS experience
• TortoiseSVN
• Bazaar

• Sites where you can host your projects if you want to use centralized version control:

   
   
  • Dreamhost – not free, but it does have 1-click SVN installs, making it pretty easy for a first-time user to set up.
   
  • Github – offers free public repositories
   
  • Project Locker - offers free private 3 Users, 300 MB git/svn repositories
   
  • Assembla – provides up to 2Gb free private subversion repositories for projects, and larger for commercial subscriptions.
   
  • Google Code - project hosting with Google comes with its own  Subversion/Mercurial repository
   
  • BitBucket - hosts free Mercurial repositories for up to 5 users for private repos and unlimited users for public repos
• Sites where you can host your projects if you want to use centralized version control:
• Github

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• Source Control
• But SVN is not the only option. There are many options, including  GitHub (using Git), Bitbucket (using Mercurial), and Google Code (using SVN or Mercurial). Which one is best? Many of my personal projects use Bitbucket because of the flexibility, but it’s really up to you to decide