Opening UE4 will cause various INI files to be checked out even though they are unchanged

[gkoreman]

Simply opening the editor will cause DefaultGame.ini to be checked out even though no changes are made to the file.

[SRombauts]

Hi @gkoreman, I've just tried this in UE4.18 with latest plugin version.

I do not have ini files auto-checked-out. In fact I even have a warning telling me an INI file is not checked-out.

But it is clear that Unreal Engine is sometimes modifying those files whenever you open the corresponding editor if it "wants" to change a configuration option (like changing it's location in the file, adding a blank line at the end...) => then the file is modified but not checked out "?" icon

This is not a behavior I can change in the plugin, sorry. Regards, Sébastien

[Ecnassianer]

I saw this issue on almost every checkin when I was collaborating with someone on a mac. Each of our copies of unreal wanted to fix up the line endings in these files, so we'd just battle back and forth switching between mac and windows EOLs. Technically the files were different, but it was annoying either way.

[SRombauts]

Once again, this is not something I can do anything about, you should post a bug report to EpicGames and let us know how it goes

[Ecnassianer]

Does this bug not happen in the perforce plugin because the file is read-only, so Unreal can never write the changed EOL version of the ini to disk?

[SRombauts]

Okay, right, I didn't though about that one, good catch!

So in this case, the solution would be to set the Config/ files to read only, that is, lock them like Content/ in the Plastic SCM server's lock.conf file

Edit: in this case, I might need to add an option to tell the plugin to treat those files in a special manner, possibly, so I reopen this as an issue/feature request

[gkoreman]

@SRombauts I would recommend not using lock.conf for the config files, as these files can and should be merged when legitimate changes occur. I would instead recommend the readonly.conf file, briefly mentioned here: http://blog.plasticscm.com/2013/06/plastic-scm-4110445-external-release-is.html

Does anyone else have experience using readonly.conf?

[reveracorp]

I'm interested in matter as well, the DefaultGame.ini causes some confusion for members of our team.

What is the suggested best practice?

Best,