I have a couple of similar pending changelists based on top of a branch of code and off the same workspace in perforce. I need to diff between them and (eventually) merge them together into one changelist. What is the fastest and simplest way to go about it? I would rather avoid creating a temporary branch.
Recent versions of the server support unshelving a change into a workspace with opened files, and resolving the merge.
So, assuming your server is recent enough, you simply:
Shelve the changes
Start with a clean workspace
Unshelve one of the changes into that workspace
Unshelve the other change into the same workspace
Resolve any merged changes that result.
Carefully examine your diffs prior to submit, to ensure you have the changes you desire.
The general answer to your question (where merging is not the goal) is that it's not possible with a p4 command.
You have to unshelve both changelists to different workspaces then run an external diff tool on the two workspace directories.
Try
p4 diff2 //repo/path/to/file#=shelf1 //repo/path/to/file#=shelf2
To compare all files:
p4 diff2 //repo/path/...#=shelf1 //repo/path/...#=shelf2
where 'shelf1' and 'shelf2' are your shelved changelists.
Caveat: you can only do a textual diff with 'p4 diff2'
Related
We are using the following P4 command for snapshot versioning.
p4 changes -m1 /path/to/files/...#have
I noticed that the above command doesn't capture CLs of deleted files if the CL is the head CL.
So it ends up having two artifacts with the same version but different files.
I was wondering how we can cover this edge case?
This is an artifact of the fact that deleted files aren't synced to the client and will therefore never be included in #have.
If possible, the best way to address this IMO is to capture the changelist at the time you sync to the head revision. Do:
p4 changes -m1 -ssubmitted /path/to/files/...
and then use that changelist to do:
p4 sync /path/to/files/...#CHANGE
Since submitted changelists are immutable (outside of edge cases like obliterate and +S files) you now have a guarantee that anyone else syncing to that same path#change will get the same set of revisions that's in your workspace.
Note that the p4 changes command will capture changelists with deleted revisions, even if those revisions are then skipped by the p4 sync!
Server version: P4D/LINUX26X86_64/2013.2/938876 (2014/09/23)
My question is about what the resulting version number of a file would be after a "p4 resolve -am". Let's say I have a workarea in which I unshelve changes to my.file resulting in my.file#8 but the workarea has my.file#10 and there are conflicts. I do a "p4 resolve -am". I'm seeing that my.file is still my.file#8. Is that correct? Is there a way to tell if this is really neither #8 or #10 but the result of the merge of the two ?
Thanks!
A resolve -am modifies the contents of your working file (the one in your workspace), but does not create a new revision until you p4 submit. It does not change the pending changelist that the file is open in, nor assign a new submitted changelist to it.
The way to see what merges have gone into the working file is the p4 resolved command.
The p4 diff command will show you the line-by-line diff between what's in your workspace and the corresponding depot version (so if you did an unshelve into an edited file followed by a merge, this will be a combination of whatever diffs are in the shelf and whatever diffs you may have introduced in your own workspace). You can also specify a version argument to p4 diff to diff against arbitrary revisions (e.g. the shelved revision, an older depot revision, etc).
I am very new to Perforce and just started using it.
After syncing my code using $p4 sync command i started editing a few files.
$p4 edit file1
$p4 edit file2
$p4 edit file3
These files were getting added to my default changelist. For collaborating with my team i wanted to create a changelist. For creating a changelist i ran $p4 change and removed "file1" from the changelist description. Now when i run $p4 opened. It gives an output similar to this.
//depot/... /file1 edit default change (text)
//depot/... /file2 edit default 111 (text+k)
//depot/... /file3 edit default 111 (text+k)
Now i have the following questions in my mind:
Which changelist am i currently working on is it default or 111 ??
what is the meaning of (test + k)?
When i make changes to file2 and file3 it is getting synced to changelist 111 and when i make changes to file1 it gets synced to default changelist . I am highly confused how is this happening ?
Also one more thing i am confused about is if do $p4 shelve will my changes disappear and will be reapplied only when i run unshelve command for the changelist created ?? Is this similar to git stash and git stash apply ?
It will be great if someone can answer these questions in detail. Any tutorial suggestions for Perforce will also be of great help.
Thanks in advance.
My recommendation for a Perforce tutorial is the Perforce User's Guide. Here's the section on changelists:
https://www.perforce.com/perforce/r15.1/manuals/intro/chapter.working_in_perforce.html#working_in_perforce.working_with_files.changelists
Which changelist am i currently working on is it default or 111 ??
Both! Both of these are pending changelists in your workspace.
what is the meaning of (text+k)?
The thing in parentheses is the "filetype". +k is a "filetype modifier" meaning that keywords (special words like $Id$ and $Revision$ and $Author$ in this file will be automatically expanded to appropriate values when you submit.
When i make changes to file2 and file3 it is getting synced to changelist 111 and when i make changes to file1 it gets synced to default changelist . I am highly confused how is this happening ?
Nothing is getting "synced" anywhere yet -- the pending changelists are just containers that reference the different files. When you shelve or submit, then the files associated with those changelists will get sent to the server and will be accessible by other clients. Since shelve and submit are changelist-level operations, only the files in those changelists are affected -- that's the point of having different pending changelists. You have all of the pending files in your workspace, but you can split up which ones get sent to the server at which times (it's a little like pushing different branches in git, but not -- you can do this on every operation in Perforce even when you aren't branching because each file is versioned individually rather than having the entire tree versioned as one atomic blob).
Also one more thing i am confused about is if do $p4 shelve will my changes disappear and will be reapplied only when i run unshelve command for the changelist created ?? Is this similar to git stash and git stash apply ?
No, p4 shelve only syncs the shelved change on the server with the local files in your workspace -- it doesn't in itself change your workspace. The equivalent of "stashing" would be to p4 shelve and then to p4 revert to wipe out the workspace changes. shelve on its own is a little more like doing a git push to a branch -- you keep your local copy but now it's also on the server (but not part of the "master" history). (It's not exactly the same though -- to be honest if you're brand new to Perforce I'd stick to regular old "submit" in a regular old branch since that's the basic workflow. Sharing work via shelves requires a lot more manual work since each shelf is like its own little mini-branch with no versioning.)
Suppose I've made some changes to a bunch of files and sent the changelist for review. The review may take up to 24 hours. During that time I might need to edit some of the files in the changelist, but when review is over, I'll need to be able to get back to the version of the file in the approved changelist. What options do I currently have to do that in Perforce?
One option that comes to mind is stashing the files and then reverting when needed, but in this way I'll lose the changes done on top of the stashed versions.
I've read about using task streams, is it something that can help me handle that situation?
I assume that the files have been shelved in the changelist for review (as opposed to emailing them off or using some other review mechanism). If so, I'd move the open files to another changelist:
p4 change
p4 reopen -c (new change) (files)
and continue working on them. The shelved versions of the files will stay in the old changelist.
If you need to go back to the old changelist, shelve your new changelist:
p4 shelve -c (new change)
and then revert your open files (they should be safe in the new shelved changelist now) and unshelve the old changelist to keep working from that point:
p4 revert (files)
p4 unshelve -s (old change)
There are lots of variations on this you could do, such as reverting and starting over from scratch rather than building your newer changes on top of the changes that are currently under review. If you do that, you'll need to merge the changes later, but Perforce will track all of that automatically and prompt you when it's time (as long as you're using Perforce commands to sync/revert/unshelve/etc -- if you start making your own backups and restoring them manually all bets are off because Perforce doesn't know what your edits are based on any more and can't guide you through the merge process intelligently).
We were working on a design, and for that we created the skeleton of the classes in our main branch. Now, we are starting to code, and for that we got a new branch. So, it would be nice if I can move all the new files in the main branch into the new branch. However, I cannot check them in yet. So, is it possible to integrate the checked out changelist? Thanks.
The Perforce support web site explains how to do this: Perforce Knowledge Base: Branching work in progress. It would be nicer if it was a single step that didn't require running eight different commands.
Since release 2013.1, the way to branch work in progress is to shelve the work and unshelve it on the branch. In detail:
Shelve your outstanding changes:
$ p4 shelve ...
Change 182535 created with 10 open file(s).
Shelving files for change 182535.
edit //info.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/master/code/arenavm.c#26
# etc.
Unshelve them on the branch (using the -b option, which maps the file name through a branch specification):
$ p4 unshelve -b mps/branch/2013-06-05/diag -s 182535
... //info.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/branch/2013-06-05/diag/code/arenavm.c - must resolve //info.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/master/code/arenavm.c#=182535 before submitting
# etc.
Resolve any merges resulting from the unshelve, using p4 resolve -as to quickly do the "safe" ones, and then doing the rest with p4 resolve as usual.
$ p4 resolve -as
//gdr-peewit/info.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/branch/2013-06-05/diag/code/arenavm.c - copy from //info.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/master/code/arenavm.c
# etc.
$ p4 resolve
No file(s) to resolve.
(The example output is from a real use case I ran just now.)
I never found a way to do that within perforce, but you can at least partially automate it.
Usually when I had to do something like that I'd check out the files in the branch I want to move things to, then use WinMerge to diff the branches and copy the changes over. Once that's done you can revert the changes in the original branch and check them in in the new branch.
It's not the best solution (no automatic checkout/add/delete of files on the new branch), but was the fastest method I came up with.
Not really.
You can of course simply open the files for edit in the new branch, and manually copy the changed files from the workspace of your main branch to the new branch's workspace. This is probably the easiest way if it just a few files.
Here are a few scripts that can be handy if a larger number of files are involved.
E.g., with the P4Shelf script you can create an archive of all your changed files, and later automatically open them in any branch with the changes restored.
Also, check out some other nifty scripts for Perforce by Jim Tilander.
To rephrase Gareth Rees' answer above in simple terms,
p4 unshelve -b target_branchspec -s changelist
:)
The easy answer is - no you can't. A quick perusal of the Perforce docs didn't come up with a ready cite for this, unfortunately, but in my experience any attempt to pull the rug out from under the Perforce server will result in your changes being lost which will leave you an unhappy camper.
Make a back up, create a new work area on the new branch, and re-apply your changes, perhaps using the diff/merge strategy outlined in Herms answer.