Version Control

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
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Huskotron
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2021 5:38 pm

Version Control

Post by Huskotron » Fri Apr 30, 2021 5:40 pm

I would love to see some kind of version control built into Live so that we can have all of the versions of a project available to revert to in case we make changes that we don't like or something gets completely messed up in the course of making a few other changes.

terracnosaur
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:00 pm
Location: Oregon
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Re: Version Control

Post by terracnosaur » Mon May 03, 2021 4:45 pm

This is a good idea. I find myself wanting metadata about saves from the past. Like a commit message in git. Why did I save this version? what were some notable qualities I wanted to annotate?

maybe instead of having me need to provide this, a brief description can be auto-mangled for editing?

36 tracks: 12 audio 24 instruments
serum, sylenth, kontact, massive, blah, etc, ad nauseam

of course that's not enough to give a description of why this save is any different from any other save.
so possibly asking for a single line of text to describe what this save was about?

minor saves could have single lines
first / last save of the day might ask for more text.

just thoughts.
Terrac Skiens

[Core 2 Duo - MacBook Pro]
[20 DSP Creamware Scope - A16 Ultra ]
[Synths / Traktor / Ableton Live]

ast*rsk
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon May 03, 2021 6:59 pm

Re: Version Control

Post by ast*rsk » Mon May 03, 2021 7:12 pm

Throwing my hat into this ring.

A Git for Ableton projects would be phenomenal, with built-in tools to manage your project.

I think the ideal scenario would look something like Apple's Time Machine in which you can manually (or automagically) set milestone commits with comments (or not) but work more like Git where you can revert and branch your project as it evolves over time, allowing you to snapshot your progress as well as revert changes that are maybe too complex to memorize.

I can see the argument against something like this being too complicated or that it's a skill in and of itself to document, note, or remember changes and progress in which you can manually revert them if mistakes are made but sometimes I just can't remember a patch I liked from months ago that I didn't bother to save because I ended up changing it in the first place hinting at the fact that I shouldn't have saved it if I wasn't happy with it by the very fact that I changed it.

Music should be accessible and this is an area that I can see being beneficial to all skill levels as well as alleviate versioning anxiety and detrimental destructive editing that tends to discourage new creators who are already fighting with learning the software, music production theory, and converting their creativity into successful projects all at once.

This can also prove useful for educators who want to snapshot a project at intervals for lessons and planning where the friction of managing multiple projects can just completely disappear with a feature like this.

On the technical side, this should probably be all 100% local. But it should also be compatible. Any version of Live that contains this feature going forward should be able to view, browse, and modify a projects local repository as long as all the metadata is included-- for example moving from an old computer to a new fresh computer with a fresh installation of Live. I think it should be up to creators themselves if they want to host their repositories somewhere (like github using LFS) but largely I see this being an offline local storage system built into the project file with the option to store repository data in a custom user defined folder (for example, a user keeps their project files in one location, but want to backup their history to a separate local or network folder location).

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