how to obliterate files in folder with different revision in perforce - perforce

Question

I have a build folder in perforce that keep tracks of all my builds but the files inside it have different revision numbers (because they are / are not affected from different builds), so in the same folder i have files with revision #1200 and other with revision #2000.
I initially was thinking to obliterate the old revisions from p4admin, since there is the option "obliterate up to revision", but in the case of this folder I'm not sure how this will behave.
There is any way in p4 for keeping only the last 2 revision of all the files in that folder? Or the only doable way is writing a script for checking each file's revision before obliterating it?

Answer 1

Perforce doesn't have an additive relative revision syntax, unfortunately, so you can't use #head-2 or anything like that.
The easiest way to do something like this IMO is to create a label with the #head-2 revisions, which you can do iteratively using the #< relative revision specifier on the label itself:
# start by labeling #head
C:\Perforce\test>p4 tag -l minus2 ...#head
//stream/main/0.f1#3 - added
//stream/main/1.15#4 - added
//stream/main/1.16#1 - added
//stream/main/1.17#1 - added
//stream/main/1.18#2 - added
//stream/main/2.f1#5 - added
//stream/main/2.f2#4 - added
# now replace everything in the label with the previous revision
C:\Perforce\test>p4 labelsync -l minus2 "...#<minus2"
//stream/main/0.f1#2 - updated
//stream/main/1.15#3 - updated
//stream/main/1.16#1 - deleted
//stream/main/1.17#1 - deleted
//stream/main/1.18#1 - updated
//stream/main/2.f1#4 - updated
//stream/main/2.f2#3 - updated
# now do it again, bringing us to #head-2
C:\Perforce\test>p4 labelsync -l minus2 "...#<minus2"
//stream/main/0.f1#1 - updated
//stream/main/1.15#2 - updated
//stream/main/1.18#1 - deleted
//stream/main/2.f1#3 - updated
//stream/main/2.f2#2 - updated
Now the label has all the latest revisions that I want to obliterate. I'll double-check with p4 files -a before doing p4 obliterate:
C:\Perforce\test>p4 files -a #1,#minus2
//stream/main/0.f1#1 - add change 72 (text)
//stream/main/1.15#2 - edit change 77 (text)
//stream/main/1.15#1 - branch change 73 (text)
//stream/main/2.f1#3 - integrate change 81 (text)
//stream/main/2.f1#2 - integrate change 78 (text)
//stream/main/2.f1#1 - branch change 74 (text)
//stream/main/2.f2#2 - integrate change 79 (text)
//stream/main/2.f2#1 - branch change 75 (text)
C:\Perforce\test>p4 obliterate -y #1,#minus2
//stream/main/0.f1#1 - purged
//stream/main/2.f1#2 - purged
//stream/main/2.f1#3 - purged
Deleted 4 label 24 integration 8 revision record(s).