CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitcommand-lineversion-controlperforce
Cloud
Cloud

Reputation: 19333

Perforce (p4v) - Simple create/push/merge branch for git developer

Background

I come from a background, and have been using it for years. Prior to that, I used for several years, and had to occasionally use CVS.

Question

I'm starting on a large perforce project and want to create a feature branch so that:

With a tool like git, this was pretty easy:

git checkout -b my_branch
# make some edits
git add -u
git commit
git push

How do I accomplish the same (more or less) in perforce, using the command-line interface? Apparently I have to first use p4 branch to "create a branch spec", and then use p4 integrate to "open files for merging or branching", but couldn't find any concrete examples that make sense.

Thank you.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 591

Answers (2)

P4Jen
P4Jen

Reputation: 1023

If you are unable to use DVCS and your site uses streams, have a look at Task Streams: https://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.current/manuals/p4guide/chapter.streams.html#streams.types.task

You can use these to work on bug-fixes or features and they are semi-private.

Once you are happy with the work it can be merged back to the main stream/branch.

They even work with non-streams depots.b

Upvotes: 1

Samwise
Samwise

Reputation: 71454

If you want something that's comparable to the git experience you probably want to be using Perforce's DVCS mode: https://www.perforce.com/perforce/r15.2/manuals/dvcs/

So, assuming you're doing this in your own local server, the flow is like this:

p4 fetch
p4 switch -c my_branch
# make some edits
p4 submit -d "Made my edits."
p4 switch main
p4 fetch
p4 merge --from my_branch
p4 resolve -am
p4 submit -d "Merged my edits into main."
p4 push

If you're doing this directly on a shared server that uses streams, you can skip the fetching and pushing part since every submit is already going straight to the "remote" (although I'll assume the allwrite/auto-reconcile feature that mimics "git commit -a" isn't on in that case, so you'll be using "p4 edit" to open your files for edit):

p4 switch -c my_branch
p4 edit (your files)
# make some edits
p4 submit -d "Made my edits."
p4 switch main
p4 merge --from my_branch
p4 resolve -am
p4 submit -d "Merged my edits into main."

If you're doing this on a shared server that doesn't use streams (i.e. "classic Perforce") then it's:

p4 integ //depot/main/... //depot/my_branch/...
cd my_branch
p4 submit -d "Created my branch."
p4 edit (your files)
# make some edits
p4 submit -d "Made my edits."
p4 integ //depot/my_branch/... //depot/main/...
p4 resolve -am
p4 submit -d "Merged my edits into main."

Upvotes: 2

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