OK, let’s try work it out.
TL;DR There’s no magical solutions for every case here 
Well, there are corner cases when user is able to mess things up.
If I’d rename a file, fix redirector (so the original file is removed, marked for deletion in P4) and I’d try change asset name to its “original name”. Perforce loves to mess things up here and to incorrectly assume that original file was simply removed …
Or if you’d moved a file named X to different place and try to move another file in place X file. In such case first I submit the first part of cleanup to the server. Then I proceed with next changes.
Sadly is often the matter of used VCS or lack of it. Every VCS has its issues. I got serious issues with SVN in Unity which relies on a different concept for asset management.
But if you don’t use VCS, start using it. If anything got messed up, you can simply revert changes and try again.
I wouldn’t agree with that. I work with this engine for years, I’m very strict about folder/file organization so I move assets all the time.
I work in small teams so it’s possible to perform redirector sweep on the entire project. Sometimes hundreds of files affected. Nothing breaks. I never had to use tricks described in the quote.
The system itself is fine. Maybe not perfect and requires some additional clicking. Simply works for me and most of users …
[USER=“35245”]Yuji Saeki[/USER], @franktech
If you have a different experience, is it possible to find any repro for issues? It could be just specific bug which we could report.
Maybe you could provide example case or project where it fails for you? We could help you to find what’s wrong.
I did experience some crashes, but it was many versions/years ago. It’s perfectly stable for me now.
Every time editor crashes for weird/unexplained reason, try to remove /Saved folder (excluding /Config) and try again. Sometimes cache corrupts. Removing cache often helps - in any engine.
Unity has this .meta files. Yep, it allows avoiding hassle with direct asset references and redirectors. Although has a much bigger flaw: you can’t quickly check all references to given file. Managing assets is difficult in Unity, you can’t be never 100% sure if given asset isn’t used somewhere by someone else. UE4 gives you a very easy way to check where this asset is used, it’s an essential feature.
The bigger game or team, this getting more and more important. UE4 comes from AAA playground and so it’s expected to make things easy for complex projects and big teams. I can’t imagine working with .meta files in UE4 projects. Using anything else then direct references could decrease overall performance.
And probably that’s the reason why Epic never did anything with a task called “Redirectors 2.0”. It was on the old Roadmap board.