Perforce Introduces Hybrid Version Control

ALAMEDA, Calif. (March 18, 2014) - Perforce Software today announced industry’s most comprehensive platform for hybrid version control. Unique capabilities across the Perforce suite of solutions help developers use Git alongside Perforce’s native versioning protocol (P4) without hindering DevOps teams from implementing and accelerating their continuous delivery pipelines. Enterprises can now adopt either centralized or distributed workflows, or both together, based on the needs of each project instead of having to make a choice.

“The Perforce hybrid model offers the perfect combination of the scalability and reliability of Perforce and the agility and flexibility of Git,” said Earth Warren, director of information technology at Beachhead Studio.

Developers and the Enterprise

In recent years, software organizations have been forced to choose between offering developers the flexibility of using popular distributed version control system (DVCS) Git and meeting the security and agility needs of enterprise DevOps.

According to a 2013 report from Gartner, “The DVCS model for source code version and configuration control gained popularity with individual programmers because it gives them better performance and makes the creation of new code branches simpler and quicker. The challenge for managers is to maintain the programmer benefits while serving the team's and enterprise's needs for quality, visibility, security and consistency.”

Furthermore, organizations have found it difficult to manage large projects with Git because of its inherent limitations with large code bases and files, while developers have had to use outdated or homegrown tools for collaboration and code review.

Collaboration without Compromise

With hybrid capabilities for version management, Perforce combines the flexibility of Git with the enterprise-readiness of Perforce’s suite of versioning and collaboration solutions.

With Perforce, developers using Git can now contribute to broader team goals more easily, without any changes to their workflows or needing to deploy anything new on their desktops. Perforce also provides repository management and refactoring capabilities that are essential to using Git in an enterprise setting. Teams of developers can use Git; P4Sandbox, Perforce’s DVCS solution; Perforce clients or any combination thereof, while targeting the same code base. Perforce also offers optimizations for globally distributed development teams working with Git. Using built-in replication technology, Perforce makes the Git experience seamless for large distributed development teams—without the need for third-party overlays.

The social coding and collaboration capabilities of Perforce Swarm now extend across both Git and P4. This enables pre-commit reviews for Git-based code in the same tool and workflow as those for P4-based code, resulting in improved code quality and efficiency. These reviews can include any size or type of file—code, images, configurations and binaries like artwork, schematics, documents, etc. Perforce has also introduced new support for reviewing 3D models from within the same environment.

Furthermore, all code and artifacts, committed via either Git or P4, can reside in a unified repository, giving DevOps a unified interface for plugging-in their continuous delivery machinery as well as the ability to enforce a consolidated security policy as mandated by enterprise IT.

Perforce hybrid version control and collaboration solutions foster:

• Coding using Git or P4
• Consolidated visibility and tracking across the entire code base
• Management of all file sizes and types in a single, secure platform
• Social coding and collaboration across Git and P4 commits
• Development analytics across all projects
• Enterprise scale without manual complexity

“We’ve seen that letting your teams use the tools they’re comfortable with is a great way to foster innovation,” said Christopher Seiwald, founder and CEO at Perforce. “That’s the fundamental goal behind our hybrid model. Developers can work as they like, Release Managers can get products out the door faster, and the DevOps team can check all the boxes for ‘ilities,’ like traceability, scalability, auditability. There’s no longer a need for anyone to compromise.”

1 Gartner Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2013, Nathan Wilson, Gordon Van Huizen, Brian Prentice, July 25, 2013