In my workspace when I run p4 status, it marks a bunch of files as "reconcile to edit". However, if I reconcile them and do a diff, all these files are identical.
Does anyone have some idea on what would be the cause?
These files include png, js, php, ttf, xsl files.
I have my workspace configured with: "Allwrite" and "Line ending characters for text files: UNIX" (this is a Windows 2012 R2).
I was guessing the Line ending was the cause, but the files include png, and after I actually submit the changelist and do p4 status, it still report the same list of files (well, I notice a few files are gone, to there maybe something there for whatever reason).
My workspace is new, so the files really shouldn't have any changes.
One possible cause of this is that the stored checksums don't match the actual file content. As an admin you can run:
p4 verify -q files ...
to do a server-side comparison of files vs their stored checksums -- if you get "BAD!" results it means they don't match each other (which means they'll also always show up as "different" on client machines since the same checksum is used there). Checksums not matching depot revision contents can be a bad thing (a given revision is supposed to be immutable) and should prompt investigation since it might indicate hardware failure, tampering, et cetera. There may also be benign ways a revision's content can change so it no longer matches its checksum -- one example is if you have dynamically expanded $DateTime$ keywords in the file and you change the server's timezone.
If the content is fine and you want to update the checksum to match, do:
p4 verify -v file
It seems like there could be several reason for this behavior. #SamStafford answer may surely be one of them.
In my case, it turns out that those files has versions that differ by capitalization. Since Windows is case insensitive, that's what messed it up and always marked them as changed.
The OP mentioned "I was guessing the Line ending was the cause" in the question, but this was a little cryptic for me and I missed how this was in fact exactly what I happened to be looking for.
In related question & answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/49803790/74296, #Samwise explains that the workspace line ending configuration "Shared" can cause this when a file is stored in perforce as "Windows style" line endings.
Related
I've googled this, and saw that someone had a similar problem here -> stackoverflow, but as luck would have it, unresolved.
I have an issue where my P4 client is not able to see or access any submitted files that are newer than 4 months old.
Background - My root directory/db files are on D drive which is undisturbed. I got a nasty virus yesterday, so I checked in all my workspace stuff and recovered to a December drive of my OS. Now that I've successfully booted up in my December version of my OS (where the same version P4V and P4A is already installed), my P4V is only able to see and access files up to 12/15/2015 - nothing after. The drive image I recovered from is dated 12/19/2016. Yet, I can physically inspect all my post Dec P4 checkins in the physical location of my DB on D drive. It's ALL THERE.
Here's really interesting info - out of curiosity, I recovered back to my Virus laden OS from yesterday. Opened up P4V, and it is able to see and access all my files up till my very last submitted file which was checked in yesterday.
Other important into
- The depot, stream, and workspace that my p4 is using is the same between my recovered Dec recovery OS, and yesterday's Virus laden OS. Nothing was ever changed in my P4 settings.
System info:
Windows 10
P4V and P4A - NTX64/2014.3/1007540 (for both my recovered windows image from Dec, and yesterday's virus laden windows)
P4 is my achilless heel. Help appreciated. I will not take offense if you explain things to me like a 3rd grader.
Cheers,
Paul
First off, I used incorrect terminology in my original question. I had my depots on D drive and everything else in their default locations on C.
Where I had it wrong: in the belief that as long as I had my depot files backed up to a safe location, I was protected. There is more to it than that :|
What went wrong: When my PC crashed, I recovered to a 5 month earlier December version of my Windows install which means (obviously) I have December's install of P4 with database files only aware of files I checked in up to December. I did indeed have 1000s of files check in after Dec, all alive and intact, but P4 is simply unaware of it. An assumption (which I had) that P4 simply peeks into the Depots to stay up to date of their contents is an incorrect and dangerous one.
To those who may benefit: For those do-it-yourselfers, these are the 2 things in Perforce you should be backing up if you want to be able to do a full recovery later down the line when things go bad:
Database files. By default, they live in the Perforce application’s “server” directory. For me, there are 67 database files in my C:\Program Files\Perforce\Server. They are all prefixed with db.* and it’s these files that P4 uses to “know” the current state of things, like, your changlists, checked-out files, all your workspaces and their settings, depots and their settings, etc, etc etc. Oh, and what files you even have in your depot! Unfortunately, when backing up database files, you can’t just copy/paste them, but must use command line commands to properly generate 2 other file types (journal, checkpoint) specifically for recovery purposes. It is these files that you'll generate new database files from in a recovery operation.
Depot directories. Depots specify directory trees that your files get stored to, and checked out from when working in your workspace. Files stored here won’t be in their native format, and non-binary files will have their contents tweaked on top of that. Depot directory trees can be manually copied/paste to a backup location.
Proper backup/recovery information can be found here. Like many things, it’s simple once you understand it, but reading this is a bit of a mouth full. It would have helped me to just see slightly fleshed out sample commands along with the reading material, so I’ve included some here. These are the bare minimum command line commands (plus other manual stuff), and will recover a checkpoint, not checkpoint + journal (again, take a look at the link to get a better understanding). Also, I would recommend practicing backup/recovery in a safe throw away environment (or throw away assets) to get the hang of this before doing it for real.
---------- Backup ------------
Despite all the material in the link, it only takes a bare minimum of 3 command line commands (plus other non-command stuff) to do a proper P4 backup, and 1 cmd (among other things) to recover on my end. Again this is only a partially fleshed out sample to illustrate what the command prompt portion of backup/recovery looks like. There is a little more to it than simply running these to get you where you want.
(note: On Windows, you may need to start a windows command prompt as administrator)
>p4 set P4USER=superuser_name
>p4 -q verify //...
>p4d -r "C:\Program Files\Perforce\Server" -jc <yourBackupDirectory>\<prefixOfYourChoosing>
---------- Recovery ------------
>p4d -f -r "C:\Program Files\Perforce\Server" -jr <yourBackupDirectory>\<prefixYouChose>.ckp.1
In my case, I had to use the -f flag due to errors when not using it.
Cheers,
Paul W
I have a set of files which are text files, but contain the ASCII 0 SOH character.
Perforce sees these files as binary. Now, being honest, I don't care what it sees them as, however, recently we have had several occurrences of Perforce giving different people different versions after a new branch is integrated.
The GUI shows version say #2/#2 (two of two) on two peoples workspaces, but they have different versions. When these files are right clicked and diffed against the latest (having selected the character set in the popup to treat them as text), it shows the file as having differences. However, choosing "Get latest revision" or doing a "p4 sync ..." does not update the file.
I have tried setting the file type to "text" and committing and they remain text up until they get branched when they revert to binary.
Has anyone seen this behaviour?
I have tried setting the file type to "text" and committing and they
remain text up until they get branched when they revert to binary.
If the target of an integrate/branch does not yet exist it gets the filetype of the original (in your case text).
If it already exists (in your case probably binary) then the filetype change of the source file does not get integrated - in your case the target still has filetype "binary".
In order to integrate the filetype change from the source file to the target you need the "-t" option when calling "p4 integrate".
It's good practice to always call "p4 integrate" with option "-t".
In the 2009.1 version of Perforce Visual Client for 32-bin Windows, the "Reconcile Offline Work" option does weird things. In the middle box where the "Local files not in depot" should be displayed, I never get anything. What I do see is that the first time I reconcile a folder, it looks like perforce is filling the box with the "local files not in depot" because a list flashes quickly before my eyes. Then all of a sudden, the list quickly disappears into thin air and I'm left with an empty list. Does anyone know how I can get this feature to show me the files that I have not yet added? It seems like the "Modified files" and "Depot files missing from workspace" features work fine.
Also, as a side note, "Reconcile Offline Work" seemed to work fine in the 2009 beta version.
I had exactly the same problem.
The solution for me was obscure but trivial.
I simply changed the root directory of my client workspace from "C:\depot" to "c:\depot".
Yes, that's right, all I did was to change the drive letter from uppercase to lowercase. And, yes, I verified that changing the drive letter back to uppercase breaks it again and that changing the drive letter back to lowercase again fixes it again. So, this is not just a coincidence.
This is almost certainly a bug in the Perforce reconcile feature.
If you look closely at the reconcile paths, they all appear with a lowercase drive letter, even if you specify an uppercase drive letter, so my guess is that the matching algorithm is simply doing a case-sensitive comparison on the file paths. This is appropriate for everything but the drive letter. Their file lister probably always sets the drive letter to lowercase, so an uppercase drive letter on your client workspace root will never match.
This certainly sometimes happens. I seems the problem is likely to occur if I change the workspace view somehow and/or upgrade P4V to new version. So the solution which worked for me in the past was to trash the problematic workspace and create a new one (sometimes have to choose a different name too).
Perhaps deleting the .p4qt and .p4scc in your user home directory can help too.
Incidently, I did have a conversation with Perforce support on the related subject some time ago, and as the problems like this are very difficult to reproduce, therefore there wasn't much that they could do.
I have found issues with long filenames in p4 reconcile
from the base direectory
p4 reconcile ./...
never returned.
but if I cd further up the tree
cd components
p4 reconcile ./...
worked.
I was able to reconcile the whole tree eventually by stepping up directories, depending on how much longer your paths are this might work for you.
I had an instance where p4v showed the visual indicator that files had changes, and doing a diff showed the changes appropriately, but resolve on any parent directory didn't show them.
Those files had been changed by downgrading a library using a unity package install, and their "last modified" date was older than the previously submitted files. On OSX running the touch command on all the files in relevant directories updated all their modified times and reconcile worked after that.
Is there a way to tell Perforce to leave text files alone without setting the file-type as binary? Or barring that, is there a way to tell the Perforce client to diff binaries? Binary usually isn't desirable, because I lose the ability to diff.
To clarify: If I edit and make changes to a *.txt file on my window client, newlines will have CR+LF as per the DOS format. But if I P4 sync on a Unix client, it will have LF only. I need Perforce to keep the format as-is, regardless of where the Perforce client lives.
That said, I do have a work-around: Set file-type as binary; and/or create a branch with text files set as "text", and integrate periodically back into the mainline where text files are set as "binary". But this is an overly-complicated work-around for what should be a very simple problem.
Finally, I'm on Perforce Windows client 2006.2.
Thanks in advance.
Set all of your client/workspace specs to 'unix' line-endings. Then no conversion will take place when you check in on Windows.
See http://answers.perforce.com/articles/KB_Article/CR-LF-Issues-and-Text-Line-endings/
The Perforce client can handle line ending properly when syncing to different platforms provided you have LineEnd option set properly on your client. Perhaps you have yours set wrong? Open up your client specs and set the LineEnd option according to your needs.
Check out this KB article on their website for more info. Here's an excerpt:
On the server side, Perforce processes
all text files using Unix-style LF
line-endings. Although Perforce stores
server archive files on disk in the
operating system's native line
termination convention (CR/LF on
Windows, LF on Unix), all line-endings
are normalized to Unix-style LF
line-endings for internal Perforce
Server operations such as p4 sync, p4
submit and p4 diff.
On the client workspace side, Perforce
handling of line-endings is determined
by a global option for each
clientspec. When you sync text files
to a client workspace with p4 sync, or
submit them back to a Perforce Server
with p4 submit, their line-endings are
converted as specified in the
clientspec LineEnd section.
When adding text files that you want to be considered binary to Perforce, use the command p4 add with the -t option to override the type mapping table. See the documentation here. The example given there is p4 add -t binary file.pdf.
I have just come across exactly the same problem, but have a better solution that does not involve changing client specs (which are international, and not all of which I have write access to).
All of our clients are Windows PCs, but Cygwin is included within the Perforce Depot. Cygwin is a Windows implementation of Unix, and requires that text files use LF for line endings.
A possible solution for older versions of Cygwin is to mount the root using the "text" option, meaning that files can have CR+LF line endings. However, on upgrading to Cygwin 1.7.9, this no longer worked, as mounts are transient unless they are written into /etc/fstab. I did not manage to make this work.
Luckily, the Perforce Guru sitting next to me came up with the solution of changing the filetype to binary+D, which uses the same RCS incremental patch storage as text files, but without the automatic line ending conversion.
I can diff these "text" files successfully between my local workspace and the depot.
Give the files a different extension.
Can I rename a folder in Perforce from //depot/FooBar/ to //depot/Foobar/?
I've tried this by renaming from //depot/FooBar/ to //depot/Temp/ to //Depot/Foobar/ but the end result ends up the same as //depot/FooBar/.
Once it is in Perforce, the case remains set. As mentioned by Johan you can obliterate, set the name up correctly, and add it in again. However, there is a slight gotcha....
If anyone else (running Windows) has already synced the wrong-cased version, then when they sync again the right one, it will not change the case on their PC. This is a peculiarity of the Windows file system acknowledging case but still being fundamentally case-independent.
If a number of users have synced, and it is not convenient to get them to remove-from-client too (and blasting the folders from their machines), then you can resort to a dark and dirty Perforce technique called "Checkpoint surgery". It's not for the fainthearted, but you do this:
Stop your server, take a checkpoint.
Using your favourite text editor that can handle multi-megabyte files, search & replace all occurances of the old case name with the new. You could of course use a script too.
Replay your checkpoint file to recreate the Perforce database meta data.
Restart your server.
This will affect all user client specs transparently, and so when they sync they will get the right case as if by magic.
It sounds hairy, but I've had to do it before and as long as you take care, backup, do a trial run etc, then all should be OK.
Maybe not needed anymore, but here's the official Perforce HowTo about changing file cases on Windows and Unix: http://answers.perforce.com/articles/KB/3448/?q=change+file+case
I'm not sure about directories, but we've had this problem with files. To fix it, we have to delete the file, submit that change, then p4 add the file with the correct case and submit the second change. Once that's done, unix users who have sync'ed the incorrect-case file have to p4 sync, then physically delete the file (because p4 won't update the case) and then p4 sync -f the file.
Our server is on Windows, so that might make a difference.
I guess it treats files and folders the same.
For files:
It depends (on whether you have a Windows or Unix server). We have this problem with our Windows perforce server (which versions our Java code), where very occasionally someone will check in a file with a case problem (this then causes compile errors because it's Java). The only way to fix this is to obliterate the file and resubmit it with the correct case.
I think you should remove the Perforce Cache, so that your modification can be shown.
You can rename with ABC rename to abc_TMP, then abc_TMP rename to abc, then clear cache.
Setps to clear cache:
Open windows user home folder (on windows7 ==> C:\Users\)
Locate the folder called ".p4qt"
Rename the folder to "old.p4qt"
Launch Perforce, now everything works!
NOTE: these steps will rest your default setting.
The question is over 3 years old, but I ran into an issue like this while doing a Subversion import into Perforce and figured the info I got could be useful to some. It's similar to the obliterate method, but helps you retain history. You use the duplicate command that may not have been available back then to retain the history. The process basically being:
Duplicate to temporary location.
Obliterate the location you just duplicated.
Duplicate from the temporary location to the renamed case location.
Obliterate the temporary location.
Through this you retain the history of file changes, but get them all in the new path as well. Unfortunately there will be no history of the path case change, but that seems to be unavoidable. Similar to other methods mentioned here, users will need to either manually rename the directories in their workspace or delete and re-sync to get the new path name.
Also, P4V caches the paths it shows in the tree so after doing this it may still show up as the old name. a p4 dirs command however will show the new case.