I am trying to automate access to Perforce via it's command line utility.
Creating a new client workspace with p4 client and syncing works ok.
Now I am allowing users to overwrite user, host, port, stream, revision.
From the docs it is not clear to me when I have to execute which commands to get the client workspace files in sync with an edited client workspace spec.
What I currently do is once p4 client is through search for
Client mymachine not changed
in stdout and do a p4 sync -f should the message not appear.
Is there a better or more sane way to do this?
I tried executing e.g. p4 sync -s in hope that it would fail should local data be deleted but it seems that I misunderstood the option?
It is not clear to me how this relates to your question about workspaces:
Now I am allowing users to overwrite user, host, port, stream,
revision.
since only one of those is a property of a workspace. I'm going to disregard that statement for now but if it was significant I'd encourage you to post a follow-up clarifying what you mean by "overwriting" each of these properties.
To your question:
From the docs it is not clear to me when I have to execute which
commands to get the client workspace files in sync with an edited
client workspace spec.
If the client View is updated, all you need to do is:
p4 sync
If the client Root is updated, or any of the other options that globally affect how files are written to the workspace, such as allwrite or modtime, you will need to re-sync the entire client. Ideally this is done by doing:
p4 sync #none
prior to changing the workspace in one of these ways. The other option would be to do something like the following sequence:
p4 sync #none
p4 sync
p4 clean
to make sure that everything is rewritten, and that any stragglers (e.g. anything that the "sync #none" couldn't locate because the Root had changed but that are still mapped in the client view) are removed from the workspace.
I tried executing e.g. p4 sync -s in hope that it would fail should
local data be deleted but it seems that I misunderstood the option?
Deleting local data is a separate issue from editing the client spec, but for that the command you want is p4 clean rather than p4 sync -- you use sync to tell the server you want it to send you new revisions, you use clean to bring your workspace back in line with what the server already sent you.
The recommended/supported workflow is to always use p4 commands to manipulate the read-only files in your workspace -- so if you want to delete a local file, use either p4 sync FILE#none (to remove it from your workspace but not affect the depot) or p4 delete FILE (to open it for delete so that it will be deleted for everyone when you submit).
Related
The title may be misleading but I need to know more terms and more about P4V to properly summarize the question. That's also why I cannot get the answer by google.
I delete a workspace by mistake. Choose view->workspaces, and then the right pane list the workspaces I have. I delete one. And that's the one I have on another machine.
Files stay on the disk of that machine. But P4V do not show this workspace anymore. I plan to open a new connection, create a new workspace and set the same location. But I'm afraid that the sync operation will override the folder. That's not what I want. Because except from the source codes I get from depot, I have built the code. If overriden, a lot of build work has to be redone.
So, how to recover my workspace in perforce?
The situation is very similar to the one described in this KB article: http://answers.perforce.com/articles/KB/2446
After you have re-created the workspace, do not sync. As you say, it will overwrite your files (at least the read-only ones), and you don't want that.
Instead, open a command prompt and run:
p4 sync -k ...
p4 clean ...
The "p4 sync -k" tells the server to do a sync but keep what you have in your workspace instead of overwriting it. The "p4 clean" tells the server to verify what's in your workspace against what you just told it you have, and refresh any files that are different.
Do you happen to have a spec depot? Just view the client (you might have to "Show deleted depot files" if you don't already have that set up. If not, try to create a new one with the same settings (I'm hoping they were easy to remember). Do not sync the new workspace. Instead, do "p4 flush", details at p4 command info . This will make the server think you've synced to latest, but won't touch what you have on the workstation.
What will happen if I cancel p4 sync during operation and then call again? Will it do all the work it has already done again?
And another one question: how and where does p4 store information about workspace file revisions? How does it know that I have n-th revision in workspace?
Does it store such a local workspace-specific information on the server's side or locally?
If you interrupt a "p4 sync", it will pick up where it left off (at the file level of granularity -- if you're syncing a single large file it'll start over, but if you're syncing a lot of files it'll start with the next file after the last one that was synced successfully).
Information about which file revisions you have in your workspace is stored on the server. Run the "p4 have" command to see this information for your workspace. You can also run commands like "p4 files #otherclient" to see which revisions another workspace ("otherclient") has synced (e.g. if you're trying to reproduce a build from another workspace).
I am new to perforce and trying to understand the following:
I would like to keep a debug client in my workspace. The idea is, before checking in anything in the main code depot, I would like to bring the CL in my debug client and run some qualification or regression to make sure that I'm not breaking anything. So, I want my debug client to always mirror the main code-repo.
Is "p4 sync -f" enough to ensure that- assuming that I don't have any opened (p4 edit/open/add etc) file in my debug client? Will force sync also overwrite the locally edited files (not p4 edit) ?
"p4 sync -f" will force all of the depot files to be downloaded to your client, but it won't remove files from your client that aren't in the depot. I would recommend using "p4 clean" instead (your server needs to be at version 2014.1 or higher -- if you're on an older server you can script an equivalent but it's a few extra steps).
I.e. do:
p4 sync ...
p4 clean ...
to make sure you have an up to date clean copy of everything in the current directory.
I am writing a build script that gets all the source code for a particular changelist and builds it. I would like to be able to run the script at any time, without having to shelve local changes or move files to a temporary location. The script will be used by others who have their own workspaces defined.
I thought it would be easiest just to get all the source code from Perforce at a temporary location and build from there. Unfortunately p4 sync does not seem to support this, it will only put files into the client view as specified by the workspace, meaning it would overwrite local changes before I could copy the files to the temporary location.
Is there any way to use p4 to copy files from Perforce into an arbitrary location?
You could create a dedicated workspace for the build script and then have the build script sync to it by using
p4 -c [workspace name] sync [depot path]
This is what a continuous build system would typically do. Be sure to blank out the Host: section of the workspace spec in this case so that it can be used on multiple systems.
An alternative might be to use p4 print with the -o option to dump the files to an arbitrary location without syncing them.
P4 sync can be done only to a client spec. Possibly, you need to create another client spec and sync to that client spec.
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.