-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Simon Verona
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 2:55 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Using Perforce SCM with jBASE
Hi
I'm looking of migrating our source control from our own home grown
system to a "proper" SCM.
I'm looking at Perforce, as it's the one Jim always advises I should
use... It
supports a command line API as well as working with Visual Studio as a
plug-
in for our dotnet software.
Yes - it works very well indeed - the only proviso is that you need to start
working the way it expects you to (which is in fact a really good way and
not the equivalent say of suddenly changing your business to SAP rules). If
you don't want to pay for something as good as perforce then use SVN (don't
even bother looking at the others), though you lose quite a lot in terms of
simplicity and only Perforce has the 'correct' model of knowing what
everyone is doing at the server side instead of just letting everyone do
whatever they want locally.
I'm looking at the command line interface and thinking of the best way of
implementing. Currently, we have a single centralised server where we
directly edit our databasic code. We only have 3 developers. We don't
use
check-in/check-out currently - and the process of making software releases
is much more informal - "Are all code changes
complete". We have been lucky, as this has always worked well.
Yeah - you are two over the limit of how many people you need for this to go
wrong ;-).
I'm looking for some advice as to how to best implement P4 into this
environment. It looks like I can build a simple source code control
"shell"
around the P4 CLI commands to check in/check out code from the
Perforce system. However, I'm not sure how we can then make software
revisions - I presume we do this from the Perforce repository..
You don't even need that really, as you are using Windows, just use the p4v
GUI. All you need (and MUST) do is place your source code in directories and
not hash files. I would avoid using any wrappers and just learn the p4
commands - you only need a few.
As you can probably see, I'm confused. I've read some of the html
online guides for Perforce but there are some assumptions are made that
the user knows about source control systems.
I think that there is a book that is much easier to get your head around.
I seem to think that Perforce almost assumes that every user has their own
full copy of the softwar environment (ie a local copy of jBase and all the
source code) and then checks out the code they want to edit from
the Perforce server, checking it back in when complete. Is this
correct? Do I presume therefore that regularly, all checked-in code
needs to be distributed to all development servers ???
Am I even close on how this would work ?
Yes - you are nearly there. Basically, ALL SCC systems give the local user a
local copy of what they need to develop. The difference though is that
perforce has you check out BEFORE you start changing anything. The first
advantage is that when someone else wants to edit that at the same time,
perforce will warn them that you are already editing it. You can then chose
to work at the same time, or wait for the other guy. When you check in,
there is a nice GUI merge that let's you review your changes in the light of
the other guys changes.
When you are happy you 'submit' and this sends the changes to the server,
importantly, in an ACID transaction so that you get all the changes or none
if something goes wrong.
When you are ready to release, you can either branch the code to a new
directory named after the release number, or you can just label all the
files so you can sync to the files as they were at that point in time. Disk
is cheap so branching makes things easier to see.
Your best bet is to download the server and play with a copy of your code.
You get 2 users or two workspaces for free. Tehre should be some good
tutorials out there but the easiest way is to just email sales or support
@perforce.com and ask them where to get started. They are really good at
support :-)
Jim
Can anybody clarify?
Thanks in advance
Simon
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