Meet Smart Locks, a new way to reduce merge conflicts with Unity Version Control. Smart Locks vastly reduces the painful merge conflicts commonly associated with file locks and branching. Developers have long been branching for faster and safer iteration. Now everyone, including artists, can use branching to scale projects with confidence. Smart Locks automatically checks to confirm you are working from the latest version before allowing you to lock a file, so it greatly minimizes the risk of merge conflicts and empowers teams to branch without worry. Smart Locks helps you explore diverse workflows. Instead of changing your team to follow your version control system (VCS), you can adapt Unity Version Control to what works best for your team. Many users believe that simply locking or checking out a file will automatically prevent merge conflicts. Unfortunately, that isn’t the reality. Traditional file locking mechanisms do provide protection against some conflicts, however, these file locks failed to travel branch by branch, allowing another artist to check out the same file from a different branch. This inability to travel leaves teams vulnerable to merge conflicts by not addressing the underlying workflow incompatibility with branching. With Smart Locks, you can branch without worrying about merge conflicts. All locking requests associated with a given file will now be aware of any new versions existing in different branches. This means you don’t have to wonder if your changes conflict with a teammate’s or if you’re working on an outdated version. This simple and effective process prevents multiple team members from working simultaneously on conflicting versions, so no changes slip through the cracks.
