Staging P4V help files locally

If the P4V host does not have internet access, P4V cannot access the help files by default. In this case, you can make them available from a locally staged location.

Prerequesites

For locally staged help to work, both P4V and the Helix Server need to be running version 2014.2 or later.

Staging location types

The following types of staging locations are known to work; others may work if a standard URI is available:

  • A file system local to the P4V client host (or locally accessible). This could be a share mapped to a local drive letter on Windows, or a remote Unix filesystem mounted locally. This shared file location is not cross platform because you can only specify one path (Unix/Mac/Windows).
  • A UNC share accessible to the P4V client host. This is only applicable to Windows clients.
  • A website accessible to the P4V client. This can be made cross platform provided every client platform has access to the website.

Procedure

To stage help files locally:

  1. Download the help files (p4vsuite_en-help.zip) from the FTP server. The exact location of this file varies depending on the version of P4V. The generic path looks as follows:

    • For 2014.2, 2014.3, and 2015.1:

      http://ftp.perforce.com/perforce/<version>/doc/help/p4vsuite/p4vsuite_en-help.zip

    • For 2015.2 and later:

      http://ftp.perforce.com/perforce/<version>/doc/manuals/p4vsuite_en-help.zip

    where <version> takes on a format of rxx.x, such as r14.2 or r17.1.

  2. Unzip p4vsuite_en-help.zip to the required staging location.

    The staging location must be accessible to the P4V client, either as a file path or a URI.

    Following are examples for each type of staging location:

    • Local P4V client file system on Windows: C:\p4vsuite_en-help
    • Local P4V client file system on Linux/Unix: /var/www/html/p4vsuite_en-help
    • UNC share: \\myserver\myshare\p4vsuite_en-help
    • Web server (if you type this URL into a browser, it should list the "perforce" folder that is a subfolder of p4vsuite_en-help): http://mywebserver/p4vsuite_en-help

  3. On the Helix Server, set the P4V.Help.URL property.

    Note

    The property name is case sensitive.

    Following are examples for setting P4V.Help.URL for each type of staging location:

    • When staging from a local file system on Windows (note the use of forward slashes (/) as path separator, not backward slashes (\) as expected on Windows):

      p4 property -a -n P4V.Help.URL -v C:/p4vsuite_en-help/

    • When staging from a local file system on Linux/Unix:

      p4 property -a -n P4V.Help.URL -v /var/www/html/p4vsuite_en-help/

    • When staging from a UNC share (note the use of forward slashes (/) as path separator, not backward slashes (\)):

      p4 property -a -n P4V.Help.URL -v file://myserver/myshare/p4vsuite_en-help/

    • When staging from a Web server:

      p4 property -a -n P4V.Help.URL -v http://mywebserver/p4vsuite_en-help/
  4. Start P4V and go to Help > P4V Help to test if accessing the files works.