Perforce can't resolve moved files - perforce

Question

I am trying to integrate a branch with several files that were moved. They were not modified in target branch, yet appear as conflicts. When clicking "accept source" file silently disappears from conflicts dialog, but still remains marked as conflict in the changelist. One way I can fix this is adding -Di flag, but it's a big no-no on my team. I also tried p4 resolve through command line, with same outcome (no error or anything, but nothing is resolved).
What is going on and how can I resolve preserving the move history?

Answer 1

Do:
p4 resolve -as
from the command line. In the vast majority of cases that's all you need to do; it tells resolve to accept the change relative to the base (which means accepting the source in the case where the target hasn't changed).
(updating to include additional info from comment)
If after you do that you get an error like:
can't move (open for delete); must accept other resolve(s) or ignore
it means that the file was moved in the source (which means that normally a resolve -as would move the workspace file to match it), but the file in your workspace can't be moved because it's already open for delete (you can't move a deleted file). This is a pretty rare situation that happens if you move a file, delete it, and then try to resolve those two operations independently (but without submitting in between). In that case you probably want to specifically "ignore" the move resolve (like the error message suggests) by doing:
p4 resolve -ay
If you've somehow gotten your working file into a bad state (maybe you were running random commands before setting up the integrate and the workspace wasn't in a clean state) and either can't figure out how you got here or have no interest in doing forensics when you just want to do a basic integrate and forget about whatever you were in the process of doing before, you can always start over like this:
p4 revert FILE
p4 integrate -b BRANCH FILE
p4 resolve -as
If you have a file that was moved and then deleted in the source, it's not possible for both of those actions to be represented in a single changelist in the target, so the default is to ignore the move and accept the delete (on the theory that since the file is deleted anyway, it doesn't particularly matter where it's deleted):
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 integ A/... B/...
//stream/main/movedel/B/foo#1 - integrate from //stream/main/movedel/A/bar#1,#2 (remapped from //stream/main/movedel/B/bar)
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 resolve -as
c:\Perforce\test\movedel\B\foo - resolving move to //stream/main/movedel/B/bar
//Samwise-dvcs-1509687817/movedel/B/foo - ignored //stream/main/movedel/B/bar
c:\Perforce\test\movedel\B\foo - resolving delete from //stream/main/movedel/A/bar#1,#2
//Samwise-dvcs-1509687817/movedel/B/foo - delete from //stream/main/movedel/A/bar
Note that after resolving move we see an ignored and after resolving delete we see delete. Note also that the history of B/foo is linked to A/bar, which contains the history of the move, so the history isn't "lost", it's just not duplicated.
If you do want to duplicate the move history from the source into the target (so that the target, viewed independently of the source, shows the file as having been moved and then deleted), you need to do the integration in multiple submits:
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 revert ...
//stream/main/movedel/B/foo#1 - was delete, reverted
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 changes A/...
Change 316 on 2022/12/08 by Samwise#Samwise-dvcs-1509687817 'delete bar'
Change 315 on 2022/12/08 by Samwise#Samwise-dvcs-1509687817 'move foo to bar'
Change 313 on 2022/12/08 by Samwise#Samwise-dvcs-1509687817 'add foo'
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 integ A/...#315 B/...
//stream/main/movedel/B/foo#1 - integrate from //stream/main/movedel/A/bar#1 (remapped from //stream/main/movedel/B/bar)
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 resolve -as
c:\Perforce\test\movedel\B\foo - merging //stream/main/movedel/A/bar#1
Diff chunks: 0 yours + 0 theirs + 0 both + 0 conflicting
//Samwise-dvcs-1509687817/movedel/B/foo - copy from //stream/main/movedel/A/bar
c:\Perforce\test\movedel\B\foo - resolving move to //stream/main/movedel/B/bar
//stream/main/movedel/B/bar - moved from //stream/main/movedel/B/foo
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 submit -d "integrate #315"
Submitting change 317.
Locking 2 files ...
move/add //stream/main/movedel/B/bar#1
move/delete //stream/main/movedel/B/foo#2
Change 317 submitted.
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 integ A/... B/...
//stream/main/movedel/B/bar#1 - delete from //stream/main/movedel/A/bar#2
C:\Perforce\test\movedel>p4 submit -d "integrate #head"
Submitting change 318.
Locking 1 files ...
delete //stream/main/movedel/B/bar#2
Change 318 submitted.

Answer 2

What is going on
Perforce is not able to deal with moved files in merge/integrate properly. I can confirm that this is still an issue in the most recent version. We have this case regularly.
Say, team A is working on //OurDepot/ExclusiveContentOfTeamA/ and you are then merging that to team B's branch. Consider the case where team B has not touched (or even looked at) that location.
Merging should be a breeze in this scenario, right? Wrong!
If team A moved and deleted files, it is always a dice roll whether the merge will work or not. Most of the time "accept source" will resolve the issues, but sometimes you get the state you described in your question.
and how can I resolve preserving the move history?
You can't. All you can do is some hacky solution forcing perforce to delete the files (p4 resolve -ay), and then manually repair the state in the branch by re-adding the files as new files. History will be lost.