CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perforce
Rajasi Kulkarni
Rajasi Kulkarni

Reputation: 111

Perforce - Get files from a shelved changelist into default changelist , work on those files and again shelve them to a same changelist

I have created a changelist for review by shelving some files. Now I want to implement the review comments. For that I tried unshelving the files but p4 opened still shows that the files are in the shelved changelist and not in the default changelist. I want to work on these files and again shelve the modified files in the same changelist. How to do this using p4 commands.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4110

Answers (1)

Bryan Pendleton
Bryan Pendleton

Reputation: 16389

If you intend to update the same shelved changelist, it's actually best if the unshelved open files are open in the same changelist number, and not in the default changelist.

The overall process for updating one of your existing shelves (number NNN) is:

  1. Make sure your workspace is empty of any work in progress: p4 opened should say "file(s) not opened on this client".
  2. p4 unshelve -s NNN -c NNN
  3. work on your files using your text editor, etc. If you open any new files, make sure you do: p4 edit -c NNN so that the new files, too, are in the same changelist number. You can also discard a file from this changelist number by doing p4 revert if that need should arise.
  4. When you are ready to update your shelved changelist, do: p4 shelve -r -c NNN. This replaces all the files in the shelved changelist with the files that you have open in your workspace at that changelist number. If there is only one (or a couple) of files that you wish to replace in the shelved changelist, you can alternatively do: p4 shelve -f -c NNN //path/to/file to replace just that one file in the shelved changelist
  5. p4 revert -w -c NNN //... to clean all those modified files out of your workspace and leave the changed versions only in the shelved changelist

You can repeat this sequence over and over to revise your shelved changelist through multiple code review cycles.

Note that this is not the only workflow that you can use with shelves. For example, it's also perfectly fine, and quite common, for developers to prefer to create multiple shelves, where each shelved changelist represents a point in time through the evolution of your work as you respond to review comments, etc.

But updating a shelved changelist in place is also a good workflow, and I use it regularly.

Watch out for one particular "gotcha", though, which is why the p4 revert -w is so important: files opened for add. If you have a file opened for add in your shelved changelist, and if you do a simple p4 revert, rather than a p4 revert -w, Perforce will leave the added file's data in your workspace on your laptop, whereas the -w flag tells Perforce to delete that file from your laptop entirely. When you do the p4 unshelve -s NNN -c NNN, if the shelved changelist contains a file opened for add, and if a file by that name is already present on your laptop, Perforce won't unshelve that file (because it doesn't want to clobber the data that's already present on your laptop), and so it won't re-open that file for add in your workspace. It will give you a "can't clobber writable file" message when it does so, but if you absent-mindedly overlook that message, then you'll not have the file open for add anymore, and when you do the p4 shelve -r -c NNN, Perforce will remove that file from the shelf, and you'll have accidentally deleted that file from your shelf. It's easy to avoid this problem if you always reliably use p4 revert -w (so put 'revert => revert -w' in your P4ALIASES file).

Upvotes: 2

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