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

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).

Related

Perforce error while running command p4 copy on new created workspace

I just created a new workspace. I am getting "Can't clobber writable file" error while doing p4 copy from a branch to another. Concerned file has been deleted on source branch. I did not touch concerned file. Even doing p4 sync -f before p4 copy command does not help. What could be issue ?
See How to fix Perforce error "Can't clobber writable file" or Perforce Error Message - Can't Clobber Writable File for more information on the "can't clobber" error in general.
In the specific case you describe where you just made a new workspace, my guess would be that you made the new workspace in a folder where files already existed locally (maybe on top of an existing workspace?). If you did create this workspace folder on top of an existing workspace, stop and pick a new root folder for this workspace; the other workspace won't "know" that its filesystem is being modified by the operations you do in this workspace, and when you switch back to that workspace everything is going to be bad (you might find that you've lost pending changes, sync won't be fetching the right thing unless you force-sync everything, et cetera).
If messing up another workspace isn't a concern, just do:
p4 clean
and once that's done your p4 copy should work.
The file is writable on your local machine. p4 is trying to protect you from getting rid of a file you might have edited.
Since you say you created a new workspace, I'm assuming it contains the same root as your previous workspace. If you know you want to get rid of everything, you can manually delete those files and retry your p4 sync -f or the hand p4 refresh.

How can I synchronize(submit) my local folder with depot, when I have lots of redundant files deleted manually from workspace,

I have never used P4 version control system before, and just come across with following problem:
I was submitted a project to server with lots of redundant files and have been working on the project actively. Now I have my project working and clean, and want to synchronize with depot. The problem is that I have deleted lots of files manually in windows file explorer(from my workspace),ignoring the rules of p4(mark for deletion, submit etc.).
How can I synchronize my project with depot? With another word, how can I delete files from depot that I have manually deleted from local folder, which are not shown in "workspace" tab.
Run the command:
p4 reconcile
This will automatically scan your entire workspace for added/deleted/modified/renamed files and open them for the appropriate actions. Once you've run reconcile you can just p4 submit as normal, and everything you did in your workspace should get submitted to the depot.
If you're using P4V, I think there's a "Reconcile..." menu command that will do something similar.

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.

P4V how to recover a deleted workspace

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.

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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