About This Manual

This is the Perforce 97.3 User's Guide. It teaches the use of Perforce's command-line interface; the GUI is not discussed. For information on our GUI interface, p4win, please see our p4 to p4win Translation Guide (for experienced Perforce users) and the p4win Users Guide (for the Perforce novice).

Although this guide can be used as a reference manual, it is primarily intended as guide/tutorial on using Perforce. The full syntax of most of the Perforce commands is not provided here; we suggest that you supplement use of this guide with the upcoming Perforce Command Reference, or with the on-line help system. Use of this manual for operating systems other than UNIX and NT should be supplemented with the release notes for that OS.

New 97.3 Features

The release notes provide information on what's new in version 97.3, and are available from our web site.

Please consult the release notes before upgrading from earlier versions of Perforce to Perforce 97.3! The journaling and checkpointing subsystems have changed; the release notes contain safety instructions on performing the upgrade.

The Example Set

We have attempted to develop a uniform example set for use with this manual. All of the examples use the source code for Elm, a popular UNIX mail program. We selected the Elm source code for a number of reasons:

• Elm is widely used, and many Perforce users will be familiar with the program. If they are not, they at least understand what it does.
• The source code is stored in well-organized subdirectories, which allow us to demonstrate certain capabilities of Perforce.
• The source code for Elm is widely available; users of this manual can download Elm and try the examples as they're encountered.

http://www.myxa.com/elm.html

We are using the Elm source with the kind permission of Sydney Weinstein and Bill Pemberton of the USENET Community Trust.

Disclaimer: To the best of our knowledge, the Elm team has never used Perforce for source management. As far as we know, they never heard of Perforce until they received our email asking for permission to use their code in our manual. No implication that the Elm team uses or endorses Perforce is intended; none should be inferred.

Please Give Us Feedback

We are always interested in receiving feedback on our manuals. Does this guide teach the topic well? Are there any glaring errors? Are the explanations clear, or are the exemplifications obfuscated by this enchiridion? Please let us know what you think; we can be reached at [email protected].