Kimura SCM Overview

Kimura SCM is a centralized source control system built for teams working in very large workspaces with huge assets (game, film/VFX, virtual production, and similar pipelines). It emphasizes coordination and visibility so large teams can work in the same project with fewer conflicts and less disruption.

What Kimura SCM Optimizes For

• Collaboration at scale: strong awareness of “who is working on what” via server-backed visibility (active operations, locks, and workspace indicators).
• Context-rich collaboration: supporting documents and evidence can be attached directly to change lists and stashes so teams can review decisions and results in place.
• Large asset workflows: designed for very large repositories and large files, where merges can be expensive and contention must be managed.
• Centralized correctness and policy: one authoritative server history, consistent access control, and predictable workflows across the team.
• Fast, clean working trees: workspace metadata lives outside the project folder, so your workspace stays “just your files” (no .git-style internals in the tree).

The Core Model

Central Authority + Scalable File Distribution

• The Kimura server is the source of truth for repositories/branches, revision history and metadata, users/groups/permissions, and workflow state (change lists, locks, visibility).
• File servers store and transfer file content. This keeps the coordination model centralized while allowing file distribution to scale through multiple endpoints.

Workspaces (The Primary User Experience)

A workspace is your local working area. It provides:

• a mapped tree view of your project,
• sync/get to the latest or a specific revision,
• pending operations (add/edit/delete/lock/move/rename),
• reconcile views (what changed locally vs server),
• change lists for organizing and submitting work.

Kimura strongly emphasizes workspace state visibility:

• visual indicators for local pending work and “not at latest revision”,
• visibility into other users’ active operations and locks,
• responsive “what changed?” views designed to work even at large scale.

Repository Links (Multi-Repo, Seamless Workspace Trees)

Kimura uses repository links (a repository map) to map local workspace paths to server (repository, branch) targets.

This enables a workflow that’s especially valuable for game/film/VFX pipelines:

• one workspace can contain multiple repositories (and, when needed, multiple branches),
• the workspace can still feel like one coherent tree to the user,
• history, reconcile, sync, and submit use the mapping to route each file operation to the correct repository/branch.

Change Lists, Stashes, Attachments, and Visibility-First Workflow

• Change lists group pending operations into the unit you submit to update server history.
• Stashes save a snapshot of in-progress work (local or server-stored for sharing), without creating a new branch of repository history.
• Attachments and supporting docs keep review context, logs, test evidence, and related artifacts with the change list or stash so collaboration does not depend on external threads and file shares.
• Live reconcile (auto-reconcile) helps detect and structure local changes (including after working offline) so large workspaces can be brought back in sync safely.
• Merge resolution sessions provide a reviewable staging area for bringing pending edits in a change list forward to newer revisions before applying the results together.

Why This Matters for Asset-Heavy Teams

Kimura SCM is designed to support the realities of asset-heavy collaboration (game, film/VFX, virtual production, and similar pipelines):

• huge working sets and binaries,
• frequent contention on the same assets,
• a need for clear ownership signals (locks/operations) and fast “current state” awareness,
• centralized access rules and auditability without losing performance in day-to-day workspace use.