Perforce 2009.2: P4 User's Guide

Table of Contents

List of Examples

Preface About This Manual

Command line versus GUIs

Getting started with Perforce

Perforce documentation

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Chapter 1 Installing P4

Installing P4 on UNIX and OS X

Installing P4 on Windows

Verifying the installation

Chapter 2 Configuring P4

Configuration overview

What is a client workspace?

How Perforce manages the workspace

Configuring Perforce settings

Using the command line

Using config files

Using environment variables

Using the Windows registry

Defining client workspaces

Verifying connections

Refining client views

Specifying mappings

Using wildcards in client views

Mapping part of the depot

Mapping files to different locations in the workspace

Mapping files to different filenames

Rearranging parts of filenames

Excluding files and directories

Avoiding mapping conflicts

Mapping different depot locations to the same workspace location

Dealing with spaces in filenames and directories

Mapping Windows workspaces across multiple drives

Using the same workspace from different machines

Changing the location of your workspace

Configuring workspace options

Configuring submit options

Configuring line-ending settings

Deleting client workspace specifications

Security

Passwords

Connection time limits

Working with Unicode servers

Chapter 3 Issuing P4 Commands

Command-line syntax

Specifying filenames on the command line

Perforce wildcards

Restrictions on filenames and identifiers

Specifying file revisions

Reporting commands

Using Perforce forms

Chapter 4 Managing Files and Changelists

Managing files

Syncing (retrieving) files

Adding files

Changing files

Discarding changes (reverting)

Deleting files

Managing changelists

Creating numbered changelists

Submitting changelists

Deleting changelists

Renaming and moving files

Shelving work in progress

Displaying information about changelists

Diffing files

Working offline

Finding changed files

Submitting your changes

Chapter 5 Resolving Conflicts

How conflicts occur

How to resolve conflicts

Your, theirs, base and merge files

Options for resolving conflicts

Accepting yours, theirs, or merge

Editing the merge file

Merging to resolve conflicts

Full list of resolve options

Resolve command-line flags

Resolve reporting commands

Locking files

Preventing multiple resolves by locking files

Preventing multiple checkouts

Chapter 6 Codelines and Branching

Basic terminology

Organizing the depot

Branching

When to branch

Creating branches

Integrating changes

Integrating using branch specifications

Integrating between unrelated files

Integrating specific file revisions

Reintegrating and reresolving files

Integration reporting

Using labels

Tagging files with a label

Untagging files

Previewing tagging results

Listing files tagged by a label

Listing labels that have been applied to files

Using a label to specify file revisions

Deleting labels

Creating a label for future use

Restricting files that can be tagged

Using static labels to archive workspace configurations

Using automatic labels as aliases for changelists or other revisions

Preventing inadvertent tagging and untagging of files

Chapter 7 Defect Tracking

Managing jobs

Searching jobs

Searching job text

Searching specific fields

Using comparison operators

Searching date fields

Fixing jobs

Linking automatically

Linking manually

Linking jobs to changelists

Chapter 8 Scripting and Reporting

Common flags used in scripting and reporting

Scripting with Perforce forms

File reporting

Displaying file status

Displaying file revision history

Listing open files

Displaying file locations

Displaying file contents

Displaying annotations (details about changes to file contents)

Monitoring changes to files

Changelist reporting

Listing changelists

Listing files and jobs affected by changelists

Label reporting

Branch and integration reporting

Job reporting

Listing jobs

Listing jobs fixed by changelists

System configuration reporting

Displaying users

Displaying workspaces

Listing depots

Sample script

Appendix A Glossary

Appendix B Perforce File Types

Perforce file types

File type modifiers

Specifying how files are stored in the server

Assigning File Types for Unicode Files

Choosing the file type

Perforce file type detection and Unicode

Overriding file types

Preserving timestamps

Expanding RCS keywords

Index