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TLDR; This is going to be a long winded post but I am sure many of you unity3d developers are also running into the same problem I am. A problem that needs a clear definitive, once and for all answer to save our collective sanity.

So I have been using git for the last 2+ years but I have not dived deep into it too much. I can branch/merge push pull from bitbucket/github etc and that works fine for regular win forms/traditional applications.

Here is the problem. I've long since moved from xna/silverlight over to unity3d and in unity in order to add a reference to a library you actually have to copy the source files from that library into your unity project folder. Although unity does allow you to drop *.dll files into a Plugin folder, there are obvious cross platform compatibility issues, and thus I never want to go there.

I have over a dozen library projects providing various functionality from AI, to content management, to logging, abstracted user input system etc etc. and I have been working on a new level editor for a future game I will be making.

Each individual library project it self is a unity project and the code files for each project are organized in unity as such

Assets\<company name>\<project name>\
Assets\<company name>\<library name>\
Assets\<company name>\<another library name>\

I do this to keep things highly organized unlike many of the other assets that are on the unity asset store. :(

So my level editor project is using multiple library projects whose code has been imported via copy paste. Each of those libraries are themselves hosted in there own local git repositories. So when I copy paste the code files from the library projects to my main unity project I automatically loose any ability to commit changes I make to that libraries git repo.

What I have been doing this last year has been the fallowing

  1. Start a main project Assets\<company name>\<main project name>\
  2. Import any library projects (copy/paste code files) Assets\<company name>\<library name>\
  3. If I need to make a change to one of the libraries I usually just edit the libraries code file(s) that are in the main project that I am working on. (otherwise more complexity ensues)
  4. Because the main project is also a git repo the changes I make to any library files also gets committed to the main project's repo.
  5. After a while I use CodeCompare (a diff utility) to do a folder comparison of Assets\<company name>\<library name>\ with the original location of the library where I previously copied the library files from.
  6. I painstakingly compare each changed code file diff by diff and migrate changes made in my main project over to the original location of the library.
  7. Now that that is done, the library is a git repo so again (2nd time) I have to make commits about the various changes that were made to the code files.

Along with that insanity here lies yet another problem. The main project is not the only main project I have on the go right now. I have a handful of projects that all reference (via copy/paste) these other libraries. So now that I have updated the code for the library and committed it I now have to go back through each main project that uses the library and copy/paste over the changes from the libraries git repo over to those main projects.

Work flow summerized

MainProjectA->Code files copied from LibraryA->LibraryA files modified inside MainProjectA->LibraryA files merged via diff comparison back to original LibraryA folder location->LibraryA code files then copied back to other projects that use LibraryA IE: MainProjectB, MainProjectC, MainProjectD.

Good lord! As my various projects get larger and larger this problem gets compounded more and more. This system works but it is very very tedious.

Intermission

So a bit of a short rant. /TakesDeepBreath /sigh I refuse to use the git command line. It wreaks of MS-DOS ala 1980's. It's 20 freaking 14 people. 2014 and us developers are still geeking out with command lines. In this day and age, I expect more. I am not learning basically a whole new command line language let alone have to switch back and fourth between windows and apps just to do something as fundamentally simple like commit a code change. Something that can be accomplished with 2-3 fast mouse clicks and a short typed message is all that is needed. git = new hawtness + unnecessary command line complexity

Having said that I most often use the built in vs2013 git features for making commits and branching/merging etc. But it does not appear to support submodules, as far as I can tell. So for that I use SourceTree.

End Intermission.

Enter git submodule hell

Like I said I have not yet used git a lot beyond it's basic core functionality and I have only done preliminary tests via test projects but I can't get git to work reliably the way I need it to and often when working with submodules there is a bit of confusion, and it often times will not commit because of various errors.

What I want to do is this

  1. Create new unity project called MainProjectA and make it a local repo
  2. Add git submodule(s) to MainProjectA from LibraryA (local repo), LibraryB (local repo) etc
  3. If I make changes to code files related to LibraryA inside of MainProjectA I want the ability to commit those specific changes back to LibraryA's repo from within MainProjectA.

I have even gone so far as to begin writing a utility that would automatically sync files between 2 different folders as soon as it detects a change. But I abandoned it because although it would solve synchronization issues it would not solve the git commit issues.

Another problem is that all my existing unity projects that have a local repo are setup as fallows

<Unity Main Project Folder>
  |- .git
  |- Assets
    |-Company Name
      |- MainProjectA
  |- Library
  |- ProjectSettings
  |- .gitignore

<Unity LibraryA Folder>
  |- .git
  |- Assets
    |-Company Name
      |- LibraryA
  |- Library
  |- ProjectSettings
  |- .gitignore

What I want to do is have a LibraryA folder in my main project that is a submodule of my LibraryA project, more specifically I want only the contents of <Unity LibraryA Folder>\Assets\Company Name\LibraryA\ to be included as a submodule in my main project folder <Unity Main Project Folder>\Assets\Company Name\LibraryA\

<Unity Main Project Folder>
  |- .git
  |- Assets
    |-Company Name
      |- MainProjectA
      |- LibraryA (submodule)
  |- Library
  |- ProjectSettings
  |- .gitignore

But SourceTree/git complains that I can't add a submodule to a existing repo folder. <Unity Main Project Folder>\Assets\Company Name\

I was going to continue writing but ... yeah I think that's enough writing, and my goal should be described well enough by now.

Conclusion

I guess I could also ask weather git has matured enough as a product that it will even allow me to do what I am trying to do? Or is it simply not possible given the architecture of git to support what I am trying to do?

Every search has come up empty, YouTube is no help and a waste of time, not to mention every example I can find is a command line example, and does not touch on submodules.

In a normal windows application submodules would not be a problem. The problem is specifically with how unity likes to have all the code files in it's project. That and how I am trying to keep my organized folder structure intact.

Please help. Please. Purdy please. I BEG YOU! I BEG YOU! ON MY FRIEAKIN KNEES BEGGING! :P

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3
  • 2
    Submodules are evil. Just google it. Why don't you create dlls for your libraries and use something like NuGet to manage versions and download dlls? You would even gain in compilation time as Unity won't need to compile everything you do every time you save a file (by the way, you don't need dlls to avoid longer compilation times, you could avoid this by putting the code in the Plugins folder: \Assets\Plugins\<company_name>...)
    – Roberto
    Commented Jul 23, 2014 at 5:29
  • I use the C# port of PureMVC for most Unity projects. That comes as a DLL and has worked fine with projects for iOs, Android, Mac and Window. Otherwise why not use the unitypackage import/export mechanism? All the plugins from the Assets Store use this to distribute their content. I use it to transfer assets from one project to the next and it seems to work fine.
    – Jerome Maurey-Delaunay
    Commented Jul 23, 2014 at 10:26
  • 2
    This is like my favorite stackoverflow question ever! Well expressed and illustrated, and exactly what I'm dealing with as well. Have you found any new solutions or gained other insights regarding this issue since you posted this two years ago?
    – Junuxx
    Commented Aug 6, 2016 at 4:40

4 Answers 4

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6

There is a really good explanation and process on the Prime31 website : http://prime31.github.io/A-Method-for-Working-with-Shared-Code-with-Unity-and-Git/ This is in my opinion the best workflow to handle this situation.

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4

Maybe you want to use symlinks/hardlinks?

<Master Project Folder>   <----- no .git here
|
|-<Unity Main Project Folder>
|   |- .git
|   |- Assets
|     |-Company Name
|       |- MainProjectA
|       |- LibraryA         ------ symlink to --+
|       |- .gitignore   <--------+              |
|   |- Library                   |              |
|   |- ProjectSettings          add LibraryA    |
|   |- .gitignore                               |
|                                               |
|-<Unity LibraryA Folder>                       |
|   |- .git                                     |
|   |- Assets                                   |
|     |-Company Name                            |
|   |- LibraryA       <-------------------------+
|   |- Library
|   |- ProjectSettings
|   |- .gitignore

This should work, despite Unity complaining about symlinks. At least on OSX.

Another (and IMO more correct) way is to have LibraryA as a submodule and have a separate test project for it (currently your Unity LibraryA Folder).

I have done 2+ years in this setup (2-3 linked repositories) and git has performed well. Maybe your graphical client is not so good? Try gitx-dev or github's desktop client (which works for non-github repos too) - or just learn the command line, it works.

Oh and the problems with adding a submodule to an existing directory - remove the directory first and commit.

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1
  • I don't understand how you could symlink LibraryA's "LibraryA" folder. I get it that you want LibraryA to show up under the assets folder of Main Project, but the LibraryA project doesn't compile TO a folder called LibraryA. All of LibraryA's assets will stay in its Assets folder, and compiled things will end up in LibraryA's "Library" folder, but they wouldn't end up in a folder called "LIbraryA". So either your diagram isn't exactly right, or I don't understand how Unity works.
    – eric frazer
    Commented Nov 8, 2017 at 23:17
0

here's what I've done.

First - if you already have copied LibraryA's files into your project, and your project is using LibraryA's objects & scripts, you must be very careful. Ensure you have absolutely nothing modified from your Git repository when you start out...

Now, with Unity closed, go wipe out the LibraryA folder your project is including. Unity, if it was open, would start to choke and die at this point.

Now, make a hardlink directory (mklink /J folder target) in your project, in the Assets folder, that will line up and mimic the folder you just deleted. The new hardlink must look almost exactly like what you just deleted.

Open up your project in Unity. If you're lucky, when it's done importing assets, it will still have the right objects in the right places, but it will have updated a bunch of stuff in your Library folder. That's ok.

Make sure in Git that the repo that represents LibraryA has no changed files in it. Simply importing that directory w/ the hardlink in it to LibraryA should NOT have touched LibraryA's files. If it did, you probably have done something wrong.

Check in all the new changes in your project's Library folder.

Now you're free to continue developing in Unity.

Er, hopefully.

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-3

I have been in the same situation with Unity. Honestly what you want to do is avoid Git for this and use SVN with Externs. Git SubModules are really not what you're looking for from personal experience, there is no way to make them behave exactly as you want for Unity. Git has a lot of advantages over SVN but SubModules definitely aren't one of them yet.

SVN Externs however work exactly the way you want. You can check out the specific folder in the LibraryA repo directly into your Main repo. From there almost every SVN client I've used (I'm on OS X and I use Cornerstone for this) allows you to directly update from and commit to that extern folder, which will modify the actual LibraryA repo. Also when you do an update on the base of the main repo all your externs will get updated as well. If you need to branch your project, you can point externs to specific revisions instead of the head.

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