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AC partially reimporting/duplicating itself after a while

edited February 2020 in Technical Q&A

I know how odd this sounds, but when I come back to my workplace after a while of inactivity, AC is reimporting or rather duplicating itself partially on my Unity installation, duplicating all actions, all action lists and some other stuff (and adding a "2" to their filenames) and deleting others… and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

I am using Unity 2019.3 and AC 1.70.2 on a Mac running 10.13.6, and it has happened a dozen times by now.

Does anyone have any hint on what is going on here?

Comments

  • edited February 2020

    Can you describe exactly what's happening in more detail? Are physical files being duplicated, or do you mean Actions within ActionLists are being duplicated? What exactly is being deleted?

    Have you a means to recreate the issue, or is it seemingly random? Did it only ever occur with this combination of Unity/AC versions? If not, what else?

    I wonder if this is a duplication of this issue. Are you using version control?

  • I am not using version control.

    I am, however, running Unity on an HD syncing itself to iCloud Drive, but I've been doing that for quite some time now without any problems.

    And it is only AC that behaves strangely … other assets or packages do not.

    Is it random? I don't know.
    It usually happens after a break from working: when I come back and hit a key on the keyboard to reactivate the monitors, I see the import dialogue reimporting certain AC files, but it seems as if that import procedure has started only seconds before I hit the key – just as if you catch a thief in action.

    It's the physical files on the HD that are being duplicated – not my ActionList Actions.

    Example: the AC/Scripts/ActionList folder usually contains:
    Action.cs
    ActionCheck.cs
    ActionCheckMultiple.cs

    After the reimport it contains:
    Action.cs
    Action 2.cs
    ActionCheck.cs
    ActionCheck 2.cs
    ActionCheckMultiple.cs
    ActionCheckMultiple 2.cs

    Many folders become "infected" like this but not all of them AFAICT. My work itself has been unaffected so far (except from the need to completely delete AC and reinstall it again and again).

    So no, that seem to be unrelated to the other issue you linked to. However, it may be related to this

    I am not a 100% sure (unfortunately), but I think this behaviour started with Unity 2019.3. I cannot recall this happening with 2019.2 or earlier.

    As regards the deletion of files, I guess, I'll have to wait until this process happens again and take a closer look.

  • edited February 2020

    Thanks for the elaboration. Are we talking about just scripts, or are other files affected?

    Is there a consistency to which folders become affected, and are all files within an affected folder duplicated?

    That the files themselves are duplicating does suggest this is a Unity issue - thanks for the link. Though, you're saying only AC files are affected? Does your project contain other script files?

  • Let's see! I'll try to provoke another "misbehaviour" during the day and get back to you as soon as I know more.

  • edited February 2020

    OK, I have "managed" to make it happen again.

    • I deleted and reinstalled AC on a project.
    • I closed the project (and Unity). In the background, file syncing to iCloud takes place which my HD is connected to.
    • I immediately reopened the project (and Unity) from Unity Hub (with a fresh editor.log) – that was at 12:54 pm. File syncing with iCloud was still in progress.
    • I went away for app. 30 minutes
    • Coming back at 13:23, AC has reimported itself partially … und stops doing so in the instant I reactivate the screen (gotcha!)

    I have saved the editor.log of that 13:25 timestamp plus a .unitypackage of AC (and what it has become like in these 32 minutes) – let me know if and what of that you may want to take a look at.

    UPDATE 13:51
    While I wrote this comment and did some app switching in the background, Unity found enough time to secretly complete its evil task and fuck up AC completely. I again have an editor.log and and AC .unitypackage available from that timestamp.

  • It sounds like iCloud's the cause. A Google search shows a number of page related to iCloud duplicating files.

    I'd recommend using git or some other application for version control, but either way - I don't think this is an issue with AC itself.

  • I can confirm that by now – I managed to mess up another asset, too. :-)

    In general, running unity in iCloud is awesome … but: don't update or delete-and-reinstall an asset while iCloud is syncing, because it many cases it may have synced a file, but not its corresponding meta file (or vice versa). Changing assets into that kind of limbo state will mess up the file system for sure.

    I have updated AC quite often lately (to get the latest and even more greatest functionality asap :-) ), but not other assets. Hence I thought it was related to AC specifically, but as almost always: correlation yes – causality no.

  • One more thing off topic (just to produce something valuable): clicking the "Discussion" link in the header menu of this forum leads to a rather limited selection of threads, while clicking "recent discussions" or "categories" in the sidebar both lead to the categories page. Just in case …

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