Perforce files all deleted - perforce

I'm new to using perforce. I was just copying files to perforce to the server for version control and sharing files. Although those 36 gigabytes of data were gone. All disappeared from my disk, nowhere to be found and reverting did not work. So is there anything I could do to restore my files?

If you submit files to Perforce, the server has safe copies of them, and you can get them back at any time just by running p4 sync.
End users are not permitted to permanently delete submitted files from a Perforce server, so under most circumstances once you submit something to Perforce it's safe forever.
Normally the administrator of a Perforce server will maintain backups so that even if the server is compromised somehow (e.g. a hardware failure or an admin mistake), the files can be recovered.
Some basic troubleshooting steps:
Does the server think you already have the files because you deleted them from a synced workspace without opening them for delete? Try p4 clean to restore your workspace to the state that you last synced/submitted.
Are the files deleted at the head revision? Try syncing to an older revision.
Did the files ever make it to the server? Try p4 files //... to see a list of all the files on the server.

Related

Perforce will not delete files and folders from Depot

I have a workspace that some files and folders were deleted offline. The workspace shows them there on the depot side. No matter what I do, I cannot get it to remove those files/folders. When I select "Mark for Delete" is says "file(s) not in client view." Well I KNOW that. That's why I want to remove them from the Depot!
The option for "Reconcile Offline Work" is grayed out. No idea why.
"Remove from Workspace" returns either "file(s) not in client view." or "no files updated" depending on its mood.
I have other folders in that area that I need to keep but I want to clean up the Depot so ONLY those folders are shown.
If I try "Get Latest Revision" with a force (I figured copy them back then delete while online), it says "11 Files Removed" but changes nothing. I have Refreshed and exited and restarted.
I am using P4V (GUI version)
Your description of the situation as having simply deleted the files offline is not accurate. If the files are not in your client view, it means you have ALSO either:
modified your client view
switched client workspaces
Undo whichever of these you did, and then Reconcile will see the missing files and open them for delete.
Since they are not currently in your client view, there is no association between the deleted files in your workspace and the corresponding depot files. Any time you want Perforce to do anything involving files in your workspace, the client view needs to specify how those files relate to the depot.
(adding more to take into account the comment about the client spec being deleted, and apparently recreated with a different view, which is pretty hard to tell you how to recover from since I don't know anything about the before/after state other than that there are files... somewhere. Unfortunately it's not possible to simply undo a client spec deletion, short of a checkpoint restore, since client specs aren't versioned objects.)
If you deleted your client spec, records of what you previously had synced to your client are deleted along with them (next time just update the Root if your workspace moves), and so Reconcile won't work, even if you recreate the client with the same View.
To be able to delete the files from P4V, you'll need to sync them, but it sounds like you have the additional problem of having re-created your client spec with an incorrect View, so you can't even sync the files yet. Here's what you'll need to do:
Add the depot path to your client view.
Sync the files to your workspace.
Mark for Delete.
Submit.
From the command line syncing is optional, so you could do these steps to delete your client (again), recreate it (with the wide-open default view this time), open the files for delete, and submit:
p4 client -d YOUR_CLIENT
p4 client -o | p4 client -i
p4 delete -v //depot/files/to/delete/...
p4 submit
If you have a spec depot, you may be able to use this to restore your workspace to a point before the view was changed.
More information about working with the spec depot is here:
http://answers.perforce.com/articles/KB/2445
Perforce doesn't recognize the offline deleted files, You have to get latest revision first with 'Fore Operation' Checked.
Now you will see all your deleted files in your depot.
If you still don't see your delete files in depot, then take a backup of the entire folder. Now delete the folder, and do a getlatest with 'Fore Operation' Checked.
Now you will for sure see the deleted files also under the depot.
Now you should do 'Mark for Delete' for the file u wish to delete from depot.

P4: How can I delete a local copy of depot files?

I have a Unity project called, lets say, testGame in my Depot. On my C:\ drive, I have the Depot sync'ed so that Depot/Workspace are the same.
However, for some reason, the local copy of testGame in the Workspace has become corrupted- Unity is missing file references, errors are stacking up. I do not have this issue on other machines where the D/W are sync'ed, this is strictly an issue local to this machine.
Revert/Rollback has not fixed this. What I'd like to do is just nuke the local Workspace copy and re-sync from the Depot. Obviously, 'Mark for Delete' is not what I want. I tried "Remove from Workspace", but it just says "c:\Perforce_IntV2\prod\dl\testGame... file(s) not opened on this client"
Just using explorer to delete this files will also cause headaches- How can I just nuke my Workspace copy from orbit?
You can sync to version 0 (the 'version' of the files before it was there, meaning it will get removed) with you client of choice ('get revision...' in p4v, then tell it to sync revision 0; p4 sync //...#0 in the command line). You can do this on the root of your workspace, so everything that perforce knows about will be gone. Then delete in explorer whatever is left (verify that it's not some new file you forgot to add first though!)
If you really want to just nuke it all, deleting from explorer first will speed up the sync to revision 0.
Another way to nuke everything is to delete the files with explorer and delete the p4 workspace in your perforce client. You will have then to set up the workspace again though.
After any of those, just sync again and you're back to a clean workspace.
From P4V you can use "Reconcile" to figure out which files are off and put them into a changelist; once they're opened in a changelist, "revert" will put them back into the state that matches the depot.
From the command line, just run:
p4 clean
to clean up your workspace and make sure it's consistent with the depot (discarding any local changes that aren't already in a pending changelist).

How can i release checked out files locally in perforce

I am new to perforce. I need clarification on the below.
I have created workspace and by mistake i have checked out the entire project(all files). I have not done any changes in the local workspace. After some days i tried to get latest revision from the server it shows some merger conflict error.
Now, How can i release the checked out files without affecting remote files. Will it affect remote files if i do revert operation locally.
Thanks for your kind advice.
Selva
If you haven't made any changes then simply reverting the checkout will "release the checked out files". This will not affect any files checked out or modified elsewhere as it is simply an operation that works on your copies of the files.
Any operation you can do will only affect your local copies and the files in the depot. You cannot directly affect files on other people's machines.

Cleaning out a workspace and setting a new mapping to the client

I was using Perforce to check some code in, into a workspace on the server. As luck would have it, things got into a mess.
How can I easily delete everything on my project, on the server, and set a new mapping to the project on the client (my dev machine)?
Thanks
The obliterate command (only available to users with super access) is used to permanently remove files from Perforce. Be aware that when you obliterate a file, it's like it never existed. All the revision history will be gone. If you really, really want to start over, then you should obliterate the files, otherwise you can just delete them (which will maintain the revision history).
Once the files have been obliterated/deleted, you should just be able to re-add the new files to the depot in the same location. I know that deleting the files will also remove them from your workspace, but it's been a while since I've obliterated anything, so I don't remember what happens there. If obliterating does leave the files on your computer, you can just delete them.

Perforce not syncing files correctly

I'm using Perforce P4V, the graphical tool, to interface with my Perforce server here at work. I have a project I added to the depot and I accidentally deleted it from my workspace on my local computer, problem is when I use the Get Revision Action (the GUI equivalent of sync), the files don't get updated, i.e. I can see the files on the server that I want, but they won't sync correctly with my local PC. It's frustrating me that the files aren't getting pulled from the server. What I'm assuming should be happening is if files are altered in anyway on my local PC, I should be able to grab the revision from the server, which then pulls the data to my local PC and overwrites the changes locally on my PC, but that isn't happening. Is there something I'm missing?
Perforce keeps track of the files that it thinks that you have on your local workstation. If you delete those files locally (and don't "tell" perforce about it), then Perforce will still think that you have those files. If you want to get them back, you need to "force sync" the files. In p4v, you can use the "Get Revision..." item and in the subsequent dialog, you can check the "force operation" checkbox to tell Perforce to give you all the files again regardless of whether Perforce thinks that you need them.
Just to complete the information, if you ever do want to remove the files locally, you can do so through p4v by choosing the "Remove from Workspace" item. Doing so will remove the files locally as well as tell perforce that you no longer have those files so that next time you sync, those files will be retrieved from the server.
Like other people have mentioned, one solution is to do a "force sync" the entire depot which is basically overwriting everything from server into your local. The downside to this is that it could take a LONG time to finish if you are working on a big depot.
Another alternative is to compare your local workspace with the server, then only force sync the files that are missing from your workspace.
p4 diff -sd //Depot/path/… | p4 -x – sync -f
-sd option: Show only the names of unopened files that are missing from the client workspace, but present in the depot.
There are more options (sa/se/etc.) available if -sd is not what you need. see here.
credits for the command goes to this blog.
They won't update because according to Perforce you still have the files on your local machine.
You need to use the "Get Revison..." option and enable the "Force Operation" option.
This will tell Perforce to refresh all the files even those it thinks you have the latest version of.
"Get Revision" will update only files that are not opened (checked out) even when "Force Operation" is enabled. You should revert all files marked as checked out in that workspace, and then use "Get Revision" with "Force Operation"
I did as you suggested, but I kept getting the message that the files were still open for edit and cannot be deleted, when trying Remove from Workspace.
Also, Get Revision returned with a message that no files were updated.
What I ended up having to do was Revert the files, then do the Get Revision action, that solved the problem.
For people coming into this question, this worked for me on the mac command line ...
cd into your local perforce workspace - the base directory of the checked out files that you are working on.
p4 sync -f
-f is to force the sync.
This can also come in handy when you restore a mac from a time machine backup.
https://www.perforce.com/perforce/r12.1/manuals/cmdref/sync.html
Check out the file, change it a little bit and then revert. Perforce will replace the local file with the latest revision.

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