Revision Control for Unreal Engine 5
This article I will explain why it is important to have version control or revision control in Unreal Engine.
Some examples why it is a smart move to have version control:
Revision Control: A backup of files and project, usually stored in cloud data centers and also within the repository source (I.e. Git).
Some unexpected outcomes that can/may happen:
- Computer can Blue-Screen of Death (loss of all work if not saved)
- Hard-drive failure
- Power-outage
- Overwritten files
- Deleted project folder on accident
- Ransom-Attack
- Stolen-property
- Unfortunate crisis occurrence that’s unstoppable
So, to begin we locate the Revision Control button interface shown on the far-lower right of UE5's toolbar.
There will be a section to select a Login for which version control provider we want to use. For instance, Git (even though in Beta) is a selectable provider, which is very efficient at having as a version control option.
Once we select out version control provider we can fill in our details, and most of the groundwork is done for us, so all we need to do is Initialize the project with Git. And accept the settings.
To submit our changes, we need to select Revision Control and proceed with Submit Changes to commit or push our changes to main-root-commit.
Once we check-in our files, the head of the project will be updated and committed to our revision-control repository.
A green-checkmark will be displayed for our projects revision history.
To add a new file to revision control, there will be a yellow-question-mark wait-to-add to revision control, the files needs to be saved to add.
When the file is saved, there will be a green-add icon, that will add the file to revision control to check-in.
If we want to make a change or create a new file we can create a check-out action of a file(s) to work on, there will be a red-checkmark.
To have the ability to check-out files we need to check-in new changes if any.
Once we add the files, then we can check-out any files that are not-checked out in revision control.
For instance, we make a new map check-in, and we check-out. So we can make as many changes we want to include, and save before checking-in the work. “A best practice in professional development workflows.”
When we are ready to check-in the files, we can get latest changes and check-in if there are no conflicts.
When checking-in work, when we save a file again, we can check-out the files until ready to submit.
When check-out files are present, other collaborators nor members can’t save or write to those checked-out files. A file-duplicate can be created, then check-in as it’s own unique file. Though, not recommended because it’s a lot of monitoring of what changes are done and can get a bit unorganized with multiple revisions of the same file.
That’s why having the ability to revision-control is necessary because a history of file changes will be stored for the projects existence.
