Problem:
I cloned an existing Unity project, which has been in continuos development for around 12 years. When oppening it, seems like Unity has completely no access to any files in project, except text-based ones (like scripts). In project window all structure and files are visible, but no prefabs, materials, scenes, images etc are clickable and viewable in inspector. Any such prefab references in scenes shows “missing prefab with guid…”. None of existing prefabs as well as newly created ones can’t be placed in scene.
Same project is being developed on multiple different Windows and Linux machines and also works with no issues in same state on MackBook Pro 2019 with OS: Sonoma 14.3.1. All using same Unity version.
I don’t have errors in console, can go in play mode.
What I’ve tried:
Ensuring that all files and folders in project has full read/write access;
Comparing GUIDs in meta files with other prefabs and scenes using text editor and those references are there.
Creating new prefab in existing project, after entering name and saving, can’t select it or place it in scene;
Creating new project in same directory. That fully works with no issues, can create and view pefabs;
Copying prefab with its meta file from original project to new project Assets and all works, can view it and its structure;
Copying original project, removing anything related to git and opening it as new project - issue persists, can’t view any prefab;
Opening project with older version of Unity 2021.3.9f1, issue persists;
Maybe someone could point me to what look at and examine.
I’ll remove the “Sprites” tag because your question is not related to it and that makes it appear in the 2D product area. Please only use tags that directly relate to the question.
Asset serialization is on default “Force Text”, but I tried switching to “Force Binary”, but the same result;
Permissions - both Unity Hub and Editor has “Full disc access” in settings. I’ve also disabled “System Integrity Protection” (SIP) and granted full read/write access to everything on all contents of whole hard dive;
I’ve tried playing around with permissions for separate prefabs through terminal with sudo, but no changes;
I have projects folder on Desktop. As I mentioned, making new Unity project there fully works and all is good. I moved them to Documents, but the result is the same;
Yesterday migration was finished to use Unity 2022 on Windows machine, so I pulled changes, discarded any locally generated changes and tried with 2022.3.44f (intel) and 2022.3.45f (silicon) and result is the same;
What I noticed - if I open project in “Safe Mode”, all assets in Project window are greyed out, except scripts. Can’t select them at all, so nothing shows on inspector. If I have some selected script in inspector, clicking on other assets doesn’t clear it. By googling there were cases related to Unity VC, but we don’t use it and it’s not enabled.
What I just noticed. I mentioned, that if I copy some prefabs with their meta files to new project, they work and I can view their structure etc. I just copied whole Assets folder to new project, so excluding any VC, packages, libraries etc, and it doesn’t work. I’ll start deleting things one by one to see what changes. There are abt 1.5GB of assets, so can take some time. Will write here, if will discover something.
It might not be a Unity bug, more like how this version of macOS file system works with it, as precisely same setup works on a bit older macOS, with Windows and with Linux.
As project is quite big and modular, quite some parts of reusable assets are added from other repos using “symbolic links” (ln -s). One of the setup scripts had one invalid source directory, so one invalid link was created to folder in Assets. Even tho in Finder (file explorer) all was fine, could easily navigate around and view all files, in Editor it rendered all assets invalid without any visible errors. Deleting this invalid link fixed the issue and project works.
