Parts and corresponding files in Excerpts/ are rearranged on saving

[chrisdiamand]

Issue type

Opening/saving issue

Description with steps to reproduce

I'm writing jazz big band charts, and saving them as uncompressed .mscx files so I can track them in Git. I'm running MuseScore 4.4.4.243461245.

When I create a jazz big band chart, the parts (and therefore the files in Excerpts/) are ordered in a sensible order - i.e. the same as in the main score: saxes 1-5, trumpets 1-4, trombones 1-4, guitar, piano, bass, drums.

However, when I close the score, re-open, and save, MuseScore will regenerate the parts in a completely different order.

This order isn't deterministic - I can close and reopen the score, and it'll give me a different order each time.

This makes finding parts in the parts tabs difficult, but also makes tracking the contents of Excerpts in git difficult, as MuseScore renames them everytime I re-open it!

In the example in the screenshot below, all I did was:

• Create a new empty big band score
• Generate parts with Parts->Open All
• Save: Parts are in the correct (i.e. main score) order
• Commit new score and parts to git
• Close MuseScore
• Re-open the file in MuseScore
• Parts order in the tab bar has changed
• Hit save - no changes were made
• Excerpts files are mysteriously re-ordered to a nonsensical order (the same as the new tab bar order)

Thanks!

Supporting files, videos and screenshots

Here's an example of how the files get renamed after saving on Mac:

What is the latest version of MuseScore Studio where this issue is present?

4.4.4.243461245

Regression

I was unable to check

Operating system

MacOS 15.2

Additional context

This is on my Mac running MacOS 15.2. I have not noticed this issue on my Linux machine but I'll double check.

This issue does affect the latest nightly (I tested MuseScore-Studio-Nightly-250670403-4.5.0-e138427.dmg)

This might be related to using uncompressed .mscx files rather than .mscz - I can't reproduce this when I save as .mscz and use unzip to check the file order. Note that I did have to manually unzip the .mscz to create the initial uncompressed project - the "Uncompressed MuseScore Folder" in the Save dialog doesn't seem to actually work for me on any platform, it always writes a .mscz regardless of whether I select it or not.

Checklist

• This report follows the guidelines for reporting bugs and issues
• I have verified that this issue has not been logged before, by searching the issue tracker for similar issues
• I have attached all requested files and information to this report
• I have attempted to identify the root problem as concisely as possible, and have used minimal reproducible examples where possible

[chrisdiamand]

I've just tried this on Linux:

• If I copy over a project that has been worked on on the Mac, I get the same issue - opening on Linux rearranges the parts again to an arbitrary order. But:
• If I start the project on Linux, I can open and close it as much as I like and the parts stay in the right order.