Best practices for managing patch versions in UE5

Development Programming & Scripting
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  1. Is it possible to collaborate on a project between two machines on different patch versions (i.e. 5.0.2 and 5.0.3)?

  2. Is there an alternative to the Epic Games Launcher if I wanted to have different UE5 patch versions on my machine?

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Hi AndarooHon,

  1. No, assets created/opened with current versions of the engine no longer work with previous versions. (For example if you open a project in 4.27, you will no longer be able to open it in 4.26) Iā€™ve never personally worked with 2 versions of the same ā€˜Major Releaseā€™ but I think the assets are tied with the Editor CL (Each change in perforce increments the CL)

  2. Youā€™d just need to create shortcuts to the different versions, if you right-click on a .uproject file, all versions on your machine should be visible.

Welcome to the forums!

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Thank you! Unfortunately it seems like this method can only be used to switch between engine versions (4.7 vs 5.0), but not patch versions (5.0.2 vs 5.0.3) of the engine. If Iā€™m currently working on a project that is being developed in 5.0.3, does this mean that I will just have to refrain from future updates on 5.0.x until the team decides to update the project as a whole?

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Youā€™re welcome. To be clear, youā€™d only be able to go from 4.27 to 5.0. The project version is determined in the .uproject (try opening it in a text editor), so as long as everyone updates their engine version at the same time the .uproject file is updated in source control youā€™ll all be on the same page.

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Thanks again, and apologies I meant to write 4.27 instead of 4.7.

Just to clarify one final thing, I opened up my .uproject file and noticed that the engine version is recorded but the patch/hotfix version is not (i.e. only ā€œ5.0ā€ is recorded instead of ā€œ5.0.3ā€); Does this mean that it is possible to collaborate between two different machines running 5.0, even if they are on different patch versions? (i.e. 5.0.2 and 5.0.3) The reason I am asking is because I am working on a project that has decided to ā€œfreezeā€ on 5.0.3, but I would still like to continue receiving new UE5 updates as they become available.

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Ah I was wrong about the .uproject. If youā€™re ā€˜freezingā€™ on 5.0.3 then maybe the team will be compiling a custom version in which case youā€™ll have some sort of hexadecimal identifier in the place of Engine Association.

Iā€™m pretty sure the asset versions being tied to Engine version CL would cause issues if you were working with 5.0.4 and everyone else was on 5.0.3. (Found some nitty-gritty info on this)

Freezing on an engine version is not a bad idea, but Iā€™ve never heard of freezing on a specific hotfix version. (Unless the team just forks their own build at that point in time)

And itā€™s just conjecture, but Iā€™d expect 5.1 to be a big jump in stability. (With the big 5.0 release out of the way feature teams will 1. have time to clean up loose ends and 2. find previously unknown issues as more people use 5.0)

Cheers

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