Navigating P4V

This section helps you get familiar with P4V terminology and layout and walks you through basic tasks such as updating status information, modifying views, and accessing administration tools.

Terminology

P4V menus and forms use a general approach to versioning terminology and actions, to ensure that users with a variety of backgrounds can best understand what to do. If you have experience with P4Win or the P4 command line, note the following differences in terminology in P4V.

Helix Server term	P4V term
Client	Workspace
Sync	Get revision
Open for edit	Check out
Open for add/delete	Mark for add/delete

Layout

P4V displays one main window with three panes: the left pane, which is also called the Tree pane; the right pane, which is where you do most of your work in P4V; and the bottom pane, which displays log and dashboard information.

• Menu bar: Provides access to all available options.

• Toolbar: Provides quick access to a subset of actions and tools available from the menu bar.

  To get information about a toolbar item or other object in P4V, move the mouse pointer over the object. P4V displays a tooltip. Some toolbar items appear dimmed but become available at the appropriate time. For example, Cancel is available to stop a command or interrupt a search only when an operation is running. Movement of the blue line in the bottom right corner indicates that an operation is in progress.

• Address bar: Lets you navigate to specific folders and files in the depot and in your workspace. You can copy from and paste into the address bar. To navigate to any of the ten most-recent locations, select from the drop-down list:
  
  

• Left pane (tree pane): Includes the following tabs:

  • Depot Tree: Shows all of the files in the depot. To view the contents of a folder in the right-hand pane, click on that folder, and select View > Files in Folder.
  • Workspace Tree: Shows the files on your computer, including files that are not in the depot.
• Right pane: Contains tabs for working with Files, History, Pending Changelists, Submitted Changelists, Branch Mappings, Labels, Workspaces, Jobs, Streams, Stream Graph, and Remote Mappings. To display a tab, click the corresponding button on the toolbar or choose it from the View menu. At the bottom of the right pane, the Details tab displays details about the current selected object.
  

To show or hide details, click the Details tab or the button next to it.

• Bottom pane: Includes the following tabs:

  • Log tab: Displays the commands issued by P4V. To display this tab, choose View > Log.

  • Dashboard tab: Displays details about the status of your workspace and provides quick links for common tasks. To display this tab, choose View > Dashboard. See Updating your workspace with the Dashboard tab.

• Context menu: To display the context menu for an object on a Mac, option-click or click and hold. On Linux and Windows, right-click. (Note that this help system uses the platform-independent terminology "right-click" when instructing you to display a context menu.)

Update status information

P4V indicates file information and status using a set of icons and badges. To obtain updated status information and refresh the display, P4V periodically queries Helix Server. To force a refresh operation, click .

Modify views

You can modify the way that information is presented in P4V’s panes and tabs. At the top of these panes and tabs, you can see one or more of the following buttons:

• Bookmarks

  Bookmarks act like shortcuts to locations in the tree. Set a bookmark by right-clicking on a directory and selecting Bookmark. You can then use this dropdown link to go to that location.

  For more information, see Bookmarking files.

• Sort order

  Use this drop-down button to sort the order of the list that you are viewing. The sort options are shown when you click the button.

• Filter

  This drop-down button allows you to filter your view in the following ways:

  • Show or hide different types of files, such as deleted files and/or local files.
  • Search for files and specs by various criteria and save those filters for reuse.
  • In the Tree pane, "re-anchor" your tree to the bookmarks that you have created. If you select a bookmark from this list, that bookmark location becomes the top of your tree view.

  For more information about filters, see Searching and filtering.

• Tear Off

  This button allows you to "tear off" the current view. This is useful for comparing two different forms side-by-side. Once you have torn off a view, you can close the tear-off by simply closing that window.

• File list view

  On the Files in Folder tab and the History tab (when viewing file history), use this icon to view files listed by file name or as thumbnails.