How can i get list of files and the differences (with color highlighting) from a changelist so that I can send it for peer review.
I tried in windows cmd p4 describe #changelist however it just shows the list of files opened in the changelist.
[Update] I could find p4 diff and it gives the differences in all the changelists in a command prompt.
I was hoping for a batch file which could input a changelist number as parameter and generate a code review which i can share over email.
sorry, I am new to perforce and don't know what to lookup so I have'nt tried anything.
I see you're trying to send changes to your peers for review, and you're interested in things like color highlighting of changes, etc.
Don't try to build a code review system from scratch, yourself.
Instead, start with a code review system that is already built; there are a number of them already out there, both free and commercial.
You can start with something like Perforce Swarm, or P4Web, or the Perforce review daemon, all of which are included with Perforce, and you can just ask your sysadmin to install them.
Or there are plenty of other fine code review tools for Perforce that you can find.
But building a tool from scratch is a big project, and you probably have many other better things to do.
p4 describe #change
Should print out the diffs of the files, in a format you can control with the -d<flags> option.
the -s option turns off those diffs.
If you want a tool to review pre-commit changes, you could use ReviewBoard which we set up a one point. post-review can take local changes and post them for review.
Related
dear all,
I am using the Perforce Windows x64 GUI 2014.1888424. Per my test, the answer is NO. It will use the assigned revision number.
I found the "integrate" and "branch" commands also don't keep the revision info.
Are these commands designed to behavior like this?
PS: I know that rename/move will keep the revision info.
Would you please give me any hint? Thank you very much!
You didn't describe precisely what test you did, so I'm speculating slightly, but: the Perforce integrate, copy, and merge commands do preserve the overall revision history of the file.
However, many of the commands which display file history do not display the full history by default; you have to specify additional commands to instruct the server to output the history across integrations.
For example, compare the output of
p4 filelog -i
versus
p4 filelog
or
p4 changes -i
versus
p4 changes
for your experiments.
The -i flag tells the server that you want to see the history of the file from prior to the integration or copy from its previous location. Here's how it's described in 'p4 help filelog':
The -i flag includes inherited file history. If a file was created by
branching (using 'p4 integrate'), filelog lists the revisions of the
file's ancestors up to the branch points that led to the specified
revision. File history inherited by renaming (using 'p4 move') is
always displayed regardless of whether -i is specified.
Note that, as you've observed, renaming is indeed handled differently than integ/copy/merge.
As for myself, when I am studying the history of a file, I tend to nearly always use the P4V tool and its supremely powerful Revision Graph and Time Lapse View tools. These tools know how to navigate all sorts of complex integration history, and make studying the history of a file much easier.
I am using perforce with Siemens TIA software. I would like to disable the ability for a file to be checked out by more than one person at a time since the files being used are binary and therefore the merge tools don't work all too well for multiple updates.
In perforce lingo you want to the make the file exclusive, or +l. If you are using the visual application p4v, you can check out the file, right click and then go "Change Filetype...". You can do the same thing on the command line:
p4 edit -t binary+l //somepath/somefile
which can include wild cards if you want to modify a bunch of files. The deeper solution is to use the p4 typemap command so you can tell perforce to understand your extension as always being binary and exclusive.
There are some workflow challenges with making a file exclusive. Imagine user A checks out the file exclusive but then goes home and is sick the next day? User B can't check out the file to do the work while user A is a away and you need an administrator to either unlock user A's computer or to revert the check out. User B can edit the file in "non-exclusive mode" by using the command line:
p4 edit -t binary //somepath/somefile_someone_else_has_exclusive
And then check it in, but now user A is going to have a mess on their hands when they do get back in and they want to check in.
See the "Locking files" section of the p4 resolve documentation - and note what you'll be losing if you do this.
I'm a very fresh user of Perfoce, so please be patient!
I am trying to create a commit (I understand it that in Perforce it is called a changelist) of the files which have been changed. It sort of happens automatically in other VC systems, but there seems to be no easy way of doing it in p4... The problem is (maybe) that I'm not editing the files by hand, the files are generated (please don't ask me why do I have to check in the generated files...) so the whole directory tree is getting removed and then copied over with the new files. But Perforce acts as if nothing happened. In both my workspace and the depot it displays the updated files, but when someone will check them out on another machine, the files will be of the previous version.
I'm fine with doing it either through GUI or through the command line. I'd prefer the command line, because that would spare me the trouble in the long run, but it doesn't seem like it should be much hassle either way.
In other words, let's say, this is the workflow I'm used to from SVN or Git:
Run status to see what changed.
Stage / add to commit what you want to be in the next revision.
Commit and send it to the versioning server.
What I'm not able to do is the "stage" phase - because the changes are not discovered automatically.
EDIT
Ah, I think, I figured it out: reconciliation was what I needed... well, I guess if you don't marry, this word would hardly ever happen in your vocabulary :)
It appears that the proper command is reconcile. Also, as Bryan Pendleton suggested there should be status, but I must have an older version of Perforces, which doesn't have this command. This command is also available from context menu in either depot or workspace panels of Perforce graphical interface, when you click on the modified file.
in perforce, i have a pending list with some changed files. now i want to revert to the base, but without loosing my changes, so i want to back them up somewhere. like saving the DIFFs of each file. at a later time, i want to restore those changes and continue my work.
is this possible? if so, how?
thanks!
there is no need for external tools at all, assuming you are on a unix machine (or have a proper cygwin setup under Windows, haven't tested it.) The only caveat is that Perforce's p4 diff produces an output that is slightly incompatible with patch, therefore you need it to point to your unix diff-command. In your client-root you can do
P4DIFF=/usr/bin/diff p4 diff -du > pending-changes.patch
optional (if you want to revert the open files from the command-line, otherwise use p4v):
p4 revert `p4 opened|awk -F\# '{print $1}'`
Later you would open the files for edit (can be automated by extracting the affected files from the patchfile pending-changes.patch and then:
patch < pending-patches
Depending on your path-layout in your client-root, you have to use the -p#num option of patch to get the patch applied cleanly.
You should be able to do a shelve. It's a way of saving a changelist for future editing. The link below is a Python add-in for Perforce that implements shelve. Also, I know that Practical Perforce has a couple of ways to shelve current changes without an external script. I don't have the book in front of me but I'll try to update this question tonight when I do.
http://public.perforce.com/wiki/P4_Shelve
Linked to from P4Shelve, is P4tar which looks very useful, and does the operations on the client, rather than branching on the server.
Certainly I'll be looking into doing similar things soon.
See also this question:
Sending my changelist to someone else without checking in.
It's basically the same thing.
Create a branch of these files in some appropriate location
Check out the branch versions of the files you have edited
Copy the edited files over from the trunk and submit them
Revert the files on the trunk
Now you've got those "diffs" you wanted safely archived. When your ready to apply those changes later on, just integrate them back into the trunk.
This is what the Python script, that Brett mentioned, does. This is the way to do it manually without any special tools.
How can I figure out the state of the files in my client, I want to know if the file needs an updated, or patched, or modified etc. In CVS, I used to simply run "cvs -n -q update . > file". Later look for M,U,P,C attributes to get the current status of the file.
In perforce, "p4 sync -n" doesn't give output like "cvs -n -q update". How can I see the current status of files, in case of Perforce?
To my knowledge, there isn't a command that will give you exactly what you want. In looking what the update command does, there is no single alternative in Perforce. I think that the closest that you will come will be to use the 'p4 fstat' command and parse the output from there to get the information that you need.
You might find this page helpful.
I also found this link to a p4wrapper that claims to wrap in come CVS commands (including update) into a script. There might be others like this one around as well.
I also wanted to comment that the answer to this question is like many with Perforce when asking "how do I do...". The answer usually comes down to writing a script to take the output from perforce commands to get the results that you need. Their philosophy is to provide bare bones commands and have developers build off of the basic functionality. Love it or hate it, that's the basic model. Many good scripts can be found in the Perforce Public Depot here.
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but the p4 diff command has a few useful options. From the usage:
-sa Opened files that are different from the revision
in the depot, or missing.
-sb Opened for integrate files that have been resolved
but have been modified after being resolved.
-sd Unopened files that are missing on the client.
-se Unopened files that are different from the revision
in the depot.
-sl Every unopened file, along with the status of
'same, 'diff', or 'missing' as compared to its
revision in the depot.
-sr Opened files that are the same as the revision in the
depot.
Full disclosure: I work for Perforce
There will be a 2 new commands "p4 status" and "p4 reconcile" in the up-coming 2012.1 release. See the following for more details:
http://www.perforce.com/blog/120126/new-20121-p4reconcile-p4status
Not quite sure what you mean. If you are talking about seeing what files need "resolving" (in perforce language) then you can use:
p4 resolve -n
See the p4 command line manual website here:
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.current/manuals/cmdref/resolve.html#1040665
Also P4V has a nice feature to highlight unsubmitted and dirty files, if you use that client. Right-click on a fodler in the workspace view, and select "reconcile offline work." After a bit of processing you'll get a list of files that are out of sync with the depot.
Hope this helps.