Currently if I open a DaVinci Resolve project with AYON, it launches Resolve. Everything is fine but if I want to open a file on a new project I can’t because there can be only one Resolve open at a time.
Is it currently impossible to open/switch multiple projects with AYON/Resolve?
The workfile tool can switch context but only inside the same project.
I don’t know much about davinci but let’s take any other app as example, maybe Houdini or Maya, I can’t really change the current project (as far as I know) unless I opened another instance of the app.
Technically completely, no. You may be able to open the other files - but would it be completely pipeline safe? I’d say no.
There are some potential unsafe things even when switching within a project to a different context. (Say e.g. you have tool groups that set a different plug-in version for a particular folder, those are set up on launch and would not affect the loaded plug-ins of the application you’re currently running - when e.g. switching to that new context).
The magnitude of what may be invalid when switching projects is much bigger. Updating an env var is ‘somewhat doable’ but updating env vars doesn’t necessarily mean the application would respond to that directly (or at all) like e.g. loading plugins as described above.
However, there’s also the goal (not sure if already implemented?) that you may connect to very different e.g. external production trackers (Ftrack, Shotgrid) per project - meaning you’d need to completely reconnect and login to those on the switch as well (if they differed).
Currently there’s also discussions about supporting some form of “Bundles per project” so that a project can be completely locked and tied to an AYON bundle, remaining on e.g. older AYON addon versions - making the deviation and road to error even greater when switching projects would be possible within the application.
In short, the safest way forward that wouldn’t come with tons of edge cases is to disallow moving between projects from within the host applications you’re running.