This is the most important open question in the project, and it is not a technical one.
The finding
Logic Pro ships free, one-click, media-sharing branching — "Alternatives". A branch costs roughly 1 MB because alternatives share the project's media pool.
Measured across a 30-project, 26 GB real Logic library: every single project has exactly one alternative. It has been used zero times.
The same producer instead branched by Save As into 500–700 MB full copies (Pr0oject 5 DESERT, Pr0oject 5 SAD DESERT, Project 5 – Intro) and kept a 5.2 GB ZIP next to the project it duplicates.
The README opens by citing exactly those filenames as evidence of unmet need. Read strictly, they are evidence of a declined offer.
Two things temper it
- Passive tooling is used. 93 automatic Project File Backups accumulated across the same library without anyone asking. What went unused was the feature requiring a deliberate act — an argument for auto-commit, against branch-and-merge.
- Nothing on the market offers "what changed?" Alternatives gives branches with no way to compare them. So this is evidence about demand for branching, not for comprehension — which is untested, not refuted.
The task
Replicate this on other people's machines. It takes about thirty seconds:
cd ~/Music/Logic # or wherever your Logic projects live
for p in *.logicx; do
printf "%-50s alternatives=%s backups=%s\n" "$p" \
"$(ls -d "$p"/Alternatives/*/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l)" \
"$(ls -d "$p"/Alternatives/*/Project\ File\ Backups/*/ 2>/dev/null | wc -l)"
doneReport: how many projects, how many use more than one alternative, how many backups accumulated, and whether you have duplicate-project or ZIP "branches" beside them.
Also valuable, for other DAWs: Ableton has no equivalent branching feature but does auto-save to Backup/ — how many files are in yours, and have you ever opened one?
Why this matters more than any parser work
If nobody uses free branching that already exists, then branch-and-merge is not the product, and Phase 2 of the roadmap is aimed at the wrong thing. Phase 1 now carries a non-engineering exit criterion because of this finding: five producers who are not contributors run wit diff twice in a week, unprompted.
Contradicting results are as valuable as confirming ones. If you branch constantly with Alternatives, say so — that is exactly the evidence this needs.
This is the most important open question in the project, and it is not a technical one.
The finding
Logic Pro ships free, one-click, media-sharing branching — "Alternatives". A branch costs roughly 1 MB because alternatives share the project's media pool.
Measured across a 30-project, 26 GB real Logic library: every single project has exactly one alternative. It has been used zero times.
The same producer instead branched by
Save Asinto 500–700 MB full copies (Pr0oject 5 DESERT,Pr0oject 5 SAD DESERT,Project 5 – Intro) and kept a 5.2 GB ZIP next to the project it duplicates.The README opens by citing exactly those filenames as evidence of unmet need. Read strictly, they are evidence of a declined offer.
Two things temper it
The task
Replicate this on other people's machines. It takes about thirty seconds:
Report: how many projects, how many use more than one alternative, how many backups accumulated, and whether you have duplicate-project or ZIP "branches" beside them.
Also valuable, for other DAWs: Ableton has no equivalent branching feature but does auto-save to
Backup/— how many files are in yours, and have you ever opened one?Why this matters more than any parser work
If nobody uses free branching that already exists, then branch-and-merge is not the product, and Phase 2 of the roadmap is aimed at the wrong thing. Phase 1 now carries a non-engineering exit criterion because of this finding: five producers who are not contributors run
wit difftwice in a week, unprompted.Contradicting results are as valuable as confirming ones. If you branch constantly with Alternatives, say so — that is exactly the evidence this needs.