Do *Not* Make Studio Updates Destructive

[wevetments]

As a Roblox developer, it’s currently too hard to maintain the current state of my studio environment simply because it wipes the whole version folder per update.

Current Issues

1. This is undocumented behavior as far as I know. Developers who place assets they’d like to test first in the version folder without making a backup are bound to lose hours of precious work.

2. If I were to modify files within the version folder, I wouldn’t want to have to modify those all over again. If I wanted to repair my studio application, I’d expect reinstalling to be destructive, not updates.

3. Mandatory backups. I have to make multiple backups a day of the files I add/change to studio just to satisfy my anxiety. Updates can be unexpected and happen pretty quickly.

What studio should adapt is something similar to what some application uninstallers do. Leave the modified files behind and create a new folder without deleting the previous version folder.

I also think studio should just add new assets to the contents folder instead of overwriting the whole folder.

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This post’s request doesn’t work out of the box if I modify files all over the version folder.

If this issue is addressed, it would improve my development experience because having to keep multiple backups, re-modify files and losing work are all very tedious and greatly hurts development time.

[PeZsmistic]

You shouldn’t be modding Studio in the first place. These are internal files that you are not meant to touch - that there is no practical benefit to you touching (barring deleting the UI editor plugin, but we have feature requests for that). How Studio goes about updating is not a detail you should be concerned with.

Studio should instead be exposing a divorced “Projects” directory that you can set under settings for you to lazily path through for test assets.

[Quenty]

Here’s my hot take:

Studio is a tool, and while it’d be nice to follow Roblox’s philosophy, sometimes making studio do what you want to do through hacks is an appropriate solution. With this, you accept some level of risk, but I’m a big believe in using tools to get things done–and Roblox should make it as easy as possible to use these tools. Long term vision and whatnot are great, but sometimes I just want to get my work done.

[Anaminus]

There’s the Local Assets Folder setting in Studio that lets you point to a directory to load assets from, though it leaves much to be desired.

[yenyang4]

@Quenty

sometimes making studio do what you want to do through hacks is an appropriate solution.

this kind of “end user modification” generally applies to any end user software; and actually reflected in the current market for most design/production software. I can undererstand roblox not wanting such a thing avalible for their client/game side launcher; but developers should have complete control over the tools they use for development. I’d love to see, at the very least, the option to choose when to update the developer client

[yenyang4]

It’s allready a THING?!

[buildthomas]

Please read more carefully before posting – that beta feature is not related to this topic. That’s about the moment at which Studio updates, not about keeping modifications to the installation folder through updates.

[yenyang4]

@yenyang4

I’d love to see, at the very least, the option to choose when to update the developer client

It was relevent to my previous post; that’s the only reason I mentioned it. I’ll just make an edit in the future.