How to revert to an earlier revision of a project in Perforce following a deletion? - perforce

Let's say I have a project under //depot/MyProject. At changelist 1001, this project took a major change in direction, changing everything about it. At changelist 2001, it got p4 deleted. The depot is now at change 3000.
I'd like to restore //depot/MyProject back to its state at changelist 1000. Specifically, I'd like the revision history to record the fact that change 3001 is an integration of change 1000 - i.e. the last version of this project before the major change.
Can Perforce do this at all? Or do I have to rename it into something like //depot/MyProjectOriginal, because //depot/MyProject is now tainted with all those deleted revisions?
(the naive attempt to p4 integrate //depot/MyProject/...#1000 //depot/MyProject/... fails with an "all revision(s) already integrated" message)

You cannot force the integration.
You have two options: you can create a branch using changelist 1000 as the base; or sync to changelist 1000, check out all files, and then submit (a.k.a rolling back).
Option 1
If you do want the history of your changes between 1001-3000 (i.e. a fresh start from changelist 1000) then this is the better option. Using P4V, create a new branchspec and then perform an integrate from your current project to the new branch at changelist 1000. This will be submitted as changelist 3001, when you compare differences between revisions, you will not see of the changes between 1001-3000.
In the P4 visualizer this will appear as a new branch creation at 1000.
Option 2
Sync to changelist 1000, check out all files, and then submit. There should not be any conflicts to resolve. This will be submitted as changelist 3001, however when you review history you will see the everything.
I hope this makes sense, any questions, please ask.

I don't believe that you can integrate files on top of one another like that. I think that you have two options.
If you are willing to move the files, you can do a
p4 integ //depot/MyProject/...#1000 //depot/MyOriginal/Project/...
and that will integrate MyProject at changelist 1000 to the new location.
If you'd like to keep the project at the same place, you can do that as well. It's really easiest in p4v - you can right click on the folder in workspace or depot view and choose "rollback...". In the subsequent dialog, you can then pick a changelist (or date, revision, etc) to roll the folder back to. In your case, I think that you would choose changelist 1000. Stick the files into a new pending changelist (I think that this is always good practice). You can then run a preveiw (to see what would happen), save the contents to a new changelist (so that you can inspect file contents before submitting), or just go for broke and pull the trigger and submit (I generally wouldn't recommend this).
HTH

Just do:
p4 copy //depot/MyProject/...#1000 //depot/MyProject/...
This also make a nice revision graph.

Though there is an accepted answer and plenty of other solutions, none of them works for me coz I need to rollback a large directory (with GBs of data)
Here is the way I used, which works fine for huge directory:
(Suggested to do in a new and clean workspace, though not strictly required)
Assuming the directory to rollback is //depot/foo/bar and you want to rollback to changelist 1234
Make sure no one is locking any files, and make sure the directory you are trying to rollback exists in your client spec
p4 copy -v //depot/foo/bar/...#1234 //depot/foo/bar/...
p4 submit
p4 copy -v is the meat of the solution. It tells Perforce server to perform virtual copy, which means Perforce copies the files but not actually in your workspace. This avoid huge data transfer for file content (when copying and when submitting). In my case, by using "rollback" in P4V (which is doing non-virtual copy), it took over an hour just for copy, and over an hour for submit for my folder. With virtual copy, whole process took me around 1 minute.
The most important thing is, it keep a sensible history. You can see your files being updated and rolled back, and all previous history exists.

use
p4 integrate -f //depot/MyProject/...#1000 //depot/MyProject/...
The -f flag means force an integration even if they have already been integrated.
From http://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.current/manuals/cmdref/integrate.html

Related

How to only receive get file changed by revision In perforce P4

In P4, I only want to pull file changed my client workspace from server. But When I use "p4 sync", this command get all files from server. So, How to get files changed from list revision ? with the files were existed on local and not changed, the command P4 sync do not need sync. My command is here:
p4 sync -f //depot/...#Revision
If you want to restore a file you deleted with p4 delete file, use p4 revert file, not p4 sync. p4 sync is for getting the changes that other people made to the files, not for altering the changes that you made.
There are three different reasons that the files in your workspace might differ from the current head revision in the depot:
A new revision has been submitted to the depot since the last time you synced.
You have opened the files (e.g. with p4 edit) and made changes to them that are not yet submitted.
You have modified the read-only synced files in your workspace without opening them.
(You don't say in your question which of these is the case, which is why you've gotten a couple of different answers that are based on different assumptions about your workspace state -- I'm guessing it's #3, personally, but I'll give the answer for each one so you can understand how it's "supposed" to work vs what's actually going on here.)
In case 1, a normal p4 sync command will update only the files with new revisions. If the revision you previously synced is the same as the head revision, p4 sync won't update it. This makes p4 sync very fast -- you can have a million files in your workspace, and if only one of them has changed since you last sync, only that one file is affected.
In case 2, no p4 sync command will update the files, in the interest of preserving your open changes. To submit your changes to the depot, use p4 submit; to discard them, use p4 revert. Again, only the open files are affected by these commands, so a revert operation affecting only a few files isn't slowed down by however many other files are in your workspace.
In case 3, your workspace is in an inconsistent state -- Perforce's standard workflow is that any time you modify a local file you should "open" it so that the server can track your local work (and optimize operations like sync, submit, etc, as well as alert other users who open those files simultaneously to potential conflicts). If you modify a file locally without modifying it, commands like sync will no longer work as well because the state of your client is not known to the server.
You can recover from an inconsistent state by using the p4 reconcile command (which will open all the inconsistent files so that you can either submit or revert them), or the p4 clean command (which irrevocably discards the inconsistent local changes, as if you'd done p4 reconcile immediately followed by p4 revert). These commands are significantly slower than a normal sync operation since they need to scan the entire workspace rather than only the changed files, but they are still significantly faster than a sync -f since only the changed files are actually re-transferred.

How can I partially integrate a file in Perforce?

I have a file on another branch which contain a change I would like to integrate. But it contains other changes too which I don't want to integrate yet.
How can I integrate the file only partially?
I first integrated and resolved the file as usual, then I did a "p4 edit" on the file after that to remove the changes I don't want to go in yet. "p4 opened" said that the file is opened for edit, so I thought the commit will submitted as an edit not an integration. I was wrong! It still updated the integration history! So if I attempt to integrate the rest of the changes later the perforce will say "all revisions integrated", and the only way to resolve the problem is integrating by disregarding the integration history, which is painful to resolve.
How can I avoid this next time?
EDIT:
To clarify I mean there are multiple changes in a single revision of file and I want to integrate only a part of it.
(edited to reflect that the question is about partially integrating a revision, not integrating a single revision of a file)
Since a revision is the smallest atom of change in Perforce's metadata, you won't be able to record that a subset of a revision was integrated -- and since you don't want to record that the entire revision was integrated (thereby "ignoring" the rest of the revision for future integrations), rather than doing this as an integrate, I'd do it as an edit:
p4 edit target
p4 print -o theirs source#n
p4 print -o base source#n-1
p4 merge3 base theirs target > target
rm base theirs
(edit target)
p4 submit
Another option would be to initially open the file for integrate and then clear the resolve record by reverting (use the -k flag to keep local changes) and reopening for edit:
p4 integrate source#n,n target
p4 resolve
p4 revert -k target
p4 edit target
In general if there are multiple independent changes you're making to a file such that you might want to be able to cherry-pick and/or track them independently at a later date, submitting them as independent changelists will make that much much much easier. Shelving can help with this if you realize only after making a big change that it'd make more sense as a series of smaller changes -- shelve your big change, revert some parts, submit the smaller change, then unshelve the big change and continue.

Options to preserver state of file and continue working with it

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).

exclude a changelist from p4 sync

Is there any easy way to exclude a specific changelist from p4 sync?
I want to sync up my code, but I don't want to fetch the changes from changelist #1337
Like: p4 sync //depot/source/... - //depot/source/...#1337?
The best way to accomplish this is just sync to head, and then use the 'Back out submitted changelist' function in P4V ('Submitted' pane, right-click the undesired changelist, select 'Back out submitted changelist').
This will create a new pending changelist in your workspace with the undesired changes removed.
It is possible by syncing to a range and using two commands to "skip" the changelist.
p4 sync //depot/source/... - //depot/source/...#0,#1337
p4 sync //depot/source/... - //depot/source/...#1337,#head
Note: you may have to specify the changelist on either side of the one you want to skip - not sure if the range is inclusive.
HTH,
Dennis
Ok this should work depending on what you want to do. Man I really miss git :(
If you simply want to sync and temporarily ignore a changelist you can do what the first reply said and back out the change list. Just remember to not check that change list in unless you want to wipe out the ignored changelist for the branch. However this approach will not work if you need to make changes to files that exist in the ignored changelist.
If you need to work with the same files from the ignored changelist you can do the following. One thing to note however, is that the ignored changelist will be pulled out of the remote branch until you are ok with them being in your code. (there is one other option but requires someone else to do something)
If you want to ignore a change list, and not get rid of it completely but simply be able to work on your code with it off to the side, the following will work.
Back out the changelist as previously stated.
Submit the backed out changelist to wipe out the changes in the remote branch. (don't worry)
Now do another back out but this time back out the chagelist created by the previous back out and shelve it. This back out of the back out will be a pending change list that is basically a copy of the one you wanted to ignore. Once its shelved you can go about your work, even in the same files. The down side is that now the ignored changelist only exist on your work space and its up to you to submit it or decide what to do with it at some point.
You can keep the ignored change list shelved until you know what you want to do with it. If, after you work on your code, you want to re integrate that chagelist and merge it with yours you can simply unshelf it and resolve conflicts.
So the (other option)
You could do the above with help from another dev with a perforce account (perhaps the one who's changelist you want to ignore) in this case you could have them back out the changelist and submit, then you could sync, then they could back out their back out. In this case the remote branch would not need to stay in weird state while you worked on your code. The big downside is, that you would have to do this every time you wanted to sync.
A better option would be branching before an issue like this arrises but that is not as easy or light weight in perforce as it is in git.
Hope one of these options help or spark a finale and perfect solution from some one else.

Reapplying changelist in perforce

I'm rather new to perforce, but have quite a bit of other VCS experience...
Imagine this:
You submit changes (changelist 1)
A colleague submits changes on the same branch, accidentally overwriting your changes. (changelist 2)
I tried integrating (which P4V refuses to do since it's already integrated) and looked around for a way to just generate a patch that I could apply, but couldn't find anything.
For now, I will check out the versions in question and use an external merge tool, but it would be great to know if perforce supports this somehow.
Is there a way using the perforce tools (preferably in P4V) to reapply changelist 1?
You can't reapply changelist 1, but you can reapply changelist 2.
Sync to changelist 1.
Check out the file(s). P4V will warn you that, "You do not have the latest revision of the file.", and ask you if you want to get the latest. Ignore the warning by clicking the "Don't Get Latest" button.
Now sync to the head revision (I'm assuming changelist 2 corresponds to the head revision). The file(s) will now need to be resolved, which you (or your colleague) can do, properly this time, without clobbering the changes you made in changelist 1.
Probably the easiest way is to retrieve the changes from changelist 1 (//depot/...#1,#1) and then going through the normal resolve/merge+submit song and dance.

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