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Workspace Protection in practice?
Workspace Protection was introduced about a year ago. I'm just starting to try it out, and I was wondering what the collective wisdom is now that companies have had a chance to integrate it into their process?
What's one thing that surprised or disappointed you about how it's fit into your process?
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For us, it hasn't worked out at all. The problem is that before you can Merge your changes back into Main (if Main is protected), the versions of main and the branch have to match exactly, or the Merge won't be allowed. This condition (where the onshape version of the branch matches the main version) exists briefly after you create the branch and Protect Main. However, if much time goes by (max 3 weeks!) now the branch and the Main may no longer share Onshape versions (because of the great update cadence).
Infuriatingly, this causes the merge to fail, and the only way to make it work was to:
Often this would fail, or I would make a mistake, or the merge wouldn't take, or something…so I would typically have 2 -3 merges back and forth between Main and my Branch…just to get the conditions to be just right to Merge back into the protected workspace.
Generally, it was far too much work, and we've stopped trying for now.
I really liked the minor barrier to working in Main (you could just Unprotect it to get around it) because it helped us remember to work in the correct branch. But the major hassle also meant that we could: a) Release from the Branch (which we didn't want to do) or b): turn off Protected Workspaces…thereby making the whole thing ineffective.
I've submitted feedback and (I think) a support ticket or two on this.
Basically, they need the Onshape version updates in the background to be ignored by the Protected Workspace - so that the tiny, behind-the-scenes differences don't gum up the works. I haven't tried it for several months, but also haven't noticed anything about updates or new functionality - so I don't know if this issue persists today.
Wow. Ouch. That's super useful information which basically makes the feature too painful to recommend unless you're always making changes and merging back within a shorter time window.