Hi @Wokarol ,
We have removed the āPreferredā and will use the latest version as default.
If you have a reason as to why the āPreferredā version is a necessity, please let know us.
Your feedbacks are appreciated.
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Why was preferred removed?
Sometimes you have to update multiple projects to a certain unity version that isnāt the latest, and having to click cancel when opening because Unity decided to remove the preferred version setting and you have to click cancel and manually choose is a nuisanceā¦
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I will often pick a stable or previous version as my āpreferredā but then need to sometimes grab the latest to load up project examples from Github, etcā¦ The latest is often not the best default.
Unity should not run on an always-update principle which the lack of preferred seems to be promoting. Itās not an OS or other software, itās a development environment. Itās not always good to update projects while working on a production game. Latest Unity releases are far from perfect and there are now a lot of experimental aspects to 2019.x
So yes, I believe it is good practice / necessity to be able to set a preferred version.
Otherwise, itās partially defeating the point of LTS release and it seems a downgrade of the Hub too. Unless Iām mistaken and thereās some other added functionality (such as keeping projects on major | point versions by default) to replace preferred?
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Preferred Setting has been essential for me as I work on a large number of legacy projects and sometimes will use them as a basis for a new project and donāt want to risk starting in a newer version of Unity.
I would very much like to see it return.
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Awesome, man!
You could to add a option to delete old projects, rename too. Thatās my idea.
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At the very least, please just add a prompt when it isnāt clear which version of Unity a project should be opened in.
- Creating a new project? Prompt me for which version to use. Donāt assume I want to start a new project in 2019.2.0b1.
- Opening a project which uses a version of Unity which isnāt installed? Prompt me for which version to use. Donāt assume I want to open it in 2019.2.0b1.
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Same here, āPreferredā version was a very important feature!
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Please restore the preferred version selection!
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Indeed, why was preferred removed? I agree with the sentiment that removing it promotes Unity running on an always-update principle, but I thought this wasnāt even the case considering the different update streams we have now (otherwise what is the point of having them?).
Forgive me if the reason has been stated somewhere, I just havenāt found it and I thought if it should be anywhere it should be in the accompanying update notesā¦
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Crossposted from https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-hub-v2-0-0-default-editor-removal.680869/
We have some bash scripts (on Mac) that used the ādefaultEditor.jsonā data to create handy symlinks to the default editorās installed documentation and path to the UnityYAMLMerge tool. This helped to avoid having to manually update bookmarks and locate paths to the merge tool within source control apps like SourceTree and Plastic etc. after every Editor update.
Is there a way to expose some data for the latest version or something to help with this minor inconvenience?
The preferred version was a dumb hack. Instead of doing the correct thing , the 2.0 Hub version still has a preferred version, but instead of that being something the user can set, itās the current install with the latest numerical value.
Which is likeā¦ why? @joeksy , what issue did you think that the preferred version had that āthe latest versionā doesnāt have?
Hereās an illustration of the current situation:
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The preferred version was serving as a default selection as well as a fallback version to open a project where the version was not found. In v2, this flow has been changed and there are believes that the preferred version is no longer needed.
We remaining cases are New project and Tutorial.
In case of New, we offer a selection as well as defaulting to latest, as (without considering the confidence on the stability of alpha and beta) we assumed there is little reason why not use the latest when creating a new project.
As for the tutorial, we assumed there is little reason to not use the latest the user installed.
The concept of āPreferredā was confusing for some and we would like to remove the confusion.
We appreciate the voices on the feature, we would take the feedback into our discussion over the UX.
I completely agree that the preferred version isnāt needed. It was a kinda clumsy way to handle what version to open by default it.
I think itās bad to have a default version. The ideal way these things would work is:
- Click āNewā: Get a menu for creating a new project that includes version selection
- Click a project where the correct version is installed: Open that project in that version
- Click a project where the correct version is not installed: Open a menu that asks what you want to do.
- Change the value of the version dropdown: Write the new version to projectversion.txt
None of these should in any way have a certain Unity version prefered because you donāt know what Unity version we need.
In that way I could handle the version I want to use for a project in a comfortable way. Right now itās all special menus and unintuitive dropdowns.
We might want to use LTS over Tech. We probably want to use Tech over Beta/Alpha. We might need to create a bug repro, in which case the version is important. Thereās tons of good reasons to not use the latest version for projects.
I swear, most of the bad decisions the Hub team makes comes back to not understanding that we want to chose the version we want to use. Choosing the version is one of the core reasons why the Hub exists. I keep getting baffled that you donāt understand this.
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I donāt think āpreferred versionā is necessary or useful. The current UX isnāt great though. I largely agree with Baste:
- Make āNEWā a simple button and have version selection on the create project screen. The current design is more complicated for no good reason.
- DONāT default to Alpha or Beta versionsā¦ latest available final release is fine if itās easy to change via a dropdown
- Donāt have the warning icon (which is just annoying TBH) for projects that donāt have their Unity version available. Just ask to select version on launch, and you can default to the closest match if the same major version is available (so a 2019.1.f1 project could default to 2019.1.f3)
Overall I donāt see this as a big issue, but maybe others create new projects a lot more frequently than I do? Even if I were to create many new projects the version I use for each would be a case-by-case basisā¦ some latest stable, some beta if looking at upcoming features etc. āPreferredā doesnāt make sense for me.
ā
Urghhhhā¦ I just went and set versions for all projects with missing Unity installs, then when switching back to Hub itās lost all those settings so the annoying warning icons are right back. Maybe the selected version only saves if you open the project?
I think we are essentially on the same page
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Which is the current dropdown. The New button is more aim to minimize the amount of click/decision before one gets to open Editor (Letās put the Add button discussion out for now)
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Which is the case today
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Which is also the case today, user will be required to select a version on the project list before opening, otherwise, a message will prompt user to select a version.
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The ProjectVersion.txt is handled by the Editor. For some Editor, it only saves at project saving, others when the project opens. As the decision on when to save projectversion may base on how the Editor affects the project, the Hub leave this decision to the Editor to handle.
As I agree the first v2.0.0 UI/UX may be far from ideal for many workflows, we are searching to improve and satisfy as much workflow as possible. Feedbacks are gathered and evaluated upon.
Thanks for the support
What Iām saying is that the dropdown is tiny, uncomfortable, and hard to navigate:
It would be much better to just have the new button, and then put the version decision in here:
In the current UX, youāve spread the decisions about how to make a new project over two screens, and the project selection dropdown is not very comfortable to use (small text, lots of scrolling, hard-to-distinguish version names due to looking similar, etc.).
If you put the version selector in the create new version menu, you could also make it a lot better by giving it space for nesting minor versions inside of major ones.
This is not what Iām describing. The message is disconnected, requires us to take action in a different place. Instead of this:
I want something like this, just not ugly:
In essence; donāt tell me what actions I need to take in other places, make the actions directly available to me.
See @Huacanacha 's post; the current behaviour is very, very confusing. Leaving it for the Editor to handle is no good, because the Editor does arbitrary and stupid things. Upgrading the version of a project has always included this little panic of ādid it actually write to projectversion.txt, or will I have to spend tomorrow going through merge conflict hellā. If you just had that dropdown write to projectversion, itād be a much better, less confusing world.
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The newest one might be installed to try testing with new functionality but user might prefer some version until the newest are more stable
For simple example. 2019 is still not really stable. Many preview package cannot be used because it not approved. I have install it to look and see what it changed but donāt want to create new project with it yet
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It also seems like some people simply donāt understand the current implementation.
Yeah, the UI is just confusing and annoying as it is. Basteās suggestions would be nice. The Hub V1 didnāt feel as kludgy as V2.
Why canāt there be a setting to
- toggle using a preferred version
- option to set the desired preferred version to latest, latest of a certain major version, or custom
- a toggle to include betas
Then everyone can work with the HUB how they want.
Also for the love of all that is holy, can we have a link (or even better a built-in display) to the changelogs next to the install buttons? Itās the first thing I look at before installing because Iām wary of installing the newest versions and want to know what relevant things got fixed to see if itās worth it; doubly so because the Hub wants to force me to the latestā¦