p4 user

Synopsis

Create or edit Perforce user specifications and preferences.

Syntax

Description

By default, any system user becomes a valid Perforce user the first time he uses any Perforce command. When Perforce is first used, a Perforce user specification with default settings is created for the invoking user. The p4 user command can be used to edit these settings, or to create the user record if the user has not used Perforce before.

Perforce superusers can prevent random users from accessing Perforce with p4 protect.

When p4 user is called, a form is brought up in the editor defined by the P4EDITOR environment or registry variable. Perforce expects the form's entries to be entered in Perforce's standard forms format.

When called without a username, p4 user will edit the specification of the current user. When called with a username, the user specification will be displayed, but can't be changed. Superusers can edit other users' specifications with the -f (force) flag: p4 user -f username.

The user who gives the Perforce command is not necessarily the user under which the command runs. The user for any particular command is determined by the following:

• If the user running the command is a Perforce superuser, and uses the syntax p4 user -f username, user username will be edited.
• If the -u username flag is used on the command line (e.g., p4 -u joe submit), the command runs as that user (a password may be required);
• If the above hasn't been done, but the file pointed to by the P4CONFIG environment or registry variable contains a setting for P4USER, then the command runs as that user;
• If neither of the above has been done, but the P4USER environment or registry variable has been set, then the command runs as that user;
• If none of the above apply, then the username is taken from the OS level USER or USERNAME environment variable.

Form Fields

Options

Usage Notes

• The -d flag may be used by non-superusers only to delete the user specification that the command runs as. Perforce superusers can delete any Perforce user.
• User deletion will fail if the specified user owns any branches, labels, clients, jobs, or open files. Delete these objects first (submitting or reverting open files), and then delete the user.
• Passwords can be created, edited or changed in the p4 user form or via the p4 passwd command. If you edit a password in the p4 user form, do not use the comment character # within the password; Perforce will think everything following that character on the same line is a comment, and will not store it as part of the password.

No matter what the length of the password is, it will be displayed as six asterisks whenever you subsequently call p4 user.

• By default, user records are created without passwords, and any Perforce user can impersonate another by setting P4USER or by using the globally-available -u flag. To prevent another user from impersonating you, set the value of the Password: field to any string that doesn't contain whitespace or the comment character #. Once a password has been set, it must be provided to each p4 command; this can be done in one of three ways:
  • The value of the environment or registry variable P4PASSWD can be set to the password value;
  • The file pointed to by P4CONFIG can contain a setting for P4PASSWD;
  • The -P password flag can be used on the p4 command line, as in p4 -u ida -P idaspassword submit.

Each of these three methods overrides the methods above it. For more information on passwords, please see p4 passwd.

• The collected values of the Email: fields can be listed for each user with the p4 users command, and can used for any purpose.
• The p4 reviews command, which is used by the Perforce change review daemon, uses the values in the Reviews: field; when activated, it will send email to users whenever files they've subscribed to in the Reviews: field have changed. Files listed in this field must be specified in depot syntax; for example, if user joe has a Reviews: field value of

//depot/foo/...
//depot/.../README

then the change review daemon will send joe email whenever any README file has been submitted, and whenever any file under //depot/foo has been submitted.

• Set the Jobview: field to any valid jobview, and jobs matching the jobview will appear on any changelists created by this user. Jobs that are fixed by the changelist should be left in the changelist when it's submitted with p4 submit; other jobs should be deleted from the form before submission.

For example, suppose the jobs at your site have a field called Owned-By. Set the p4 user's Jobview: to Owned-By=yourname&status=open; all open jobs owned by you will appear on all changelists you create. Please see p4 jobs for a full description of jobview usage and syntax.

Examples

Related Commands