Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
These needs are as follows:
•
Collaboration
: When multiple developers work on coding the same project,
they'll usually need to share source files. They can send them back and forth
through e-mail or other manual methods, but this makes coding difficult on a
large scale and on long-term projects. It quickly becomes difficult to monitor
the code changes over time and integrate or merge two sets of changes into
one file.
•
Reverting
: Sometimes, code changes and improvements turn out to be
mistaken. A proposed edit or fix doesn't always have the intended outcome
and must be undone or reverted to the earlier state. You can keep copies of
the earlier files yourself, but maintaining potentially many copies over time
will be tedious and unnecessarily confusing.
•
Tracking changes and histories
: Often, you'll need to keep track of who does
what, especially when debugging. If someone makes a code edit, you'll want
to know who changed the code, why, and when. Again, you could manually
maintain a logfile, writing in comments and entries to document the changed
process, but this would be tedious and time consuming.
Revision control aims to solve the three main problems of collaboration, reversion,
and tracking changes. Revision control software includes Git, Perforce, Microsoft
Team Foundation Server, and others. This chapter specifically considers Git; it is
widely used, free, cross-platform, and open source. Using Git, you can begin by
configuring a special database, known as a
repository
, which can be either local
(on your computer) or remote (via a network). Then, once configured, you can track
and maintain all and any changes to your Unity projects, allowing you to revert to
the earlier states of your project, if needed, and to share or collaborate with others.
Let's see how to configure Git for general use using a graphical user interface.
Step #1 - downloading
There are many ways to get up and running with Git for Unity projects. This chapter
explores a combination of the official Git package alongside the frontend TortoiseGit.
Using these two packages, developers can track and maintain all changes to their
projects, whether working alone or in a team.
