Helix Core — version control from Perforce — tracks, manages, and secures changes to all your digital assets, including large binary files. Scale your infrastructure, support your remote teams, and move faster.
Full Video Transcript
In this video, we’re going to show you how to install the Helix Core server and the Helix Visual Client. Once set up, you’ll be ready to use all the powerful features of Helix Core.
You can easily deploy Helix Core on many different OS client server combinations, but we are going to use Windows 10 for this example.
To download, navigate to the downloads page on Perforce.com.
Click on Helix Core (P4D). Select your Family and Platform, then Download. Navigate back to the downloads page to download the Helix Visual Client (P4V).
Now we’re going to install both the server and the client.
To get started, double-click on the helix versioning engine and progress through the setup screens.
Ensure the Server (P4D) is selected. No proxy or broker is necessary for this example.
Click the Space button to check how much room is available on the drive. Click Next.
The default port number is 1666. If necessary, you can change the location for the Helix Core files. Click Next.
Now set up the client connection. In the server field, add localhost: to the already present default port number of 1666. We will use VS Code as the text editor in this example, but you can go with the default Notepad if you don’t have another editor on your machine.
Decide on a user name and click Next. Then click Start to install the Helix Core server.
Once complete you can select the “Display Technical Documentation” checkbox to view more information on our website. Click Finish and the webpage will display.
Helix Core Server is a service on Windows. You can verify it is running by going to Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Services, and scroll down to Perforce.
Go back to your downloads and double-click on the P4V installer. Click Next to begin.
For this product evaluation, click Continue Without DVCS. If desired, you can explore the features of Helix Core DVCS later.
Next, ensure all the products are selected and click Next. Now specify the server, user name, and text editor for the client.
Click Next, then click Install. Click Close to complete the install.
Now, let’s launch the client and get started using P4V.
Launch the P4V application. Enter the server host location, for this example it would be localhost:1666.
To set up a new user, click the New button. Enter a username, full name, and email. Make sure to provide a simple password that you’ll remember. Click Save, then Ok.
Now we are going to set up a new workspace on your machine, and since this is a new server, create a new stream depot on the server, then load some code into it.
First go to Connection > New Workspace to get started.
You can set up the workspace anywhere you want on your system. We will create the workspace root in Users > MyName > Perforce.
When we click OK, we are done creating the workspace. Now we’ll add files to the server, using a Wizard.
We are going to create a folder to load some sample source code. Click New Folder and type in a name.
Now we can select the initial set of files we want to keep on the server. For this example, we will click Browse and navigate to the source code, which is located on the desktop in My VCS Files > Ionic > Core.
When we click Select Folder, you’ll see that name under Ionic in the Wizard.
Click Next to proceed.
Next, we will name the stream depot. We will use the default name of streamDepot, and the default name for the mainline, which is mainline.
When we click Next we will see a summary of the files being added to the workspace. Click Start to load the files. When it’s complete, click Finish.
Now, we can go to work on our new Perforce installation. We are going to checkout one of the files we stored on the server using the Wizard, and edit it from your new workspace. Then we’ll submit the changes back to the server.
First, select the workspace where we just loaded the files.
Then navigate to the Sassy CSS (SCSS) file we want to edit.
Right-click on the file and select “Check Out and Open.”
Changes you make are kept in a changelist until you are ready to submit them to the server, creating a new version.
You can have multiple changelists going at the same time. If you choose new, you’ll get a new numbered changelist. For this example, we will add a note in it to describe the change.
We can make some very important edits using VS Code, then go to File > Save and we’ll close VS Code.
Click over to the Pending Tab to view pending changelists. The change we just made is in changelist number two.
Select the changelist and click Submit to merge. You can see that the edited file has a new version 2/2. The two numbers indicate that version 2 is on the server and also in the workspace.
You’re all set! Now you can continue to explore all the great features of Helix Core.