Set not tracked folders and files in perforce as writable - version-control

I already have some folders that often need to be rewritten and are local in my .p4ignore however they are still always automatically marked as not writable. how can i exclude these files that are not on the server and not tracked from being made none writable. a file like this would be the unreal autosave folder for example

These files aren't really "untracked" the way you currently have things set up. If the files are being made readable, it means that somebody else has added them to the depot and you're syncing them down. .p4ignore stops you from adding files from your workspace, but it doesn't stop anyone else from adding them to the depot and it doesn't stop you from syncing them down.
Luckily Perforce allows you to configure what files are and aren't part of your workspace. Edit your client view to exclude the files; the next time you sync they'll be removed, and from that point on you'll only ever see files there if you put them there yourself; Perforce will not touch them, including making them read-only.
https://www.perforce.com/perforce/r13.1/manuals/p4v/Defining_a_client_view.html
https://www.perforce.com/perforce/r14.3/manuals/p4v/streams.views.html
https://www.perforce.com/perforce/r12.1/manuals/cmdref/o.views.html#:~:text=To%20create%20a%20client%20view,to%20evolve%20along%20different%20paths.
Once your client view is configured correctly, .p4ignore is no longer necessary. If you're using streams, configuring the stream view to exclude unwanted files will automatically propagate the change to all workspaces of that stream.

Related

How can I do a stream copy/merge of only a subdirectory in Perforce?

I'm using P4V. I work in a subdirectory (eg code/jorge) and other people work in another subdirectory (eg art/) that I never deal with. Additionally I have a stream where I do my personal work. Every so often I need to merge changes from the main line to my stream, and copy them back up. However, the files in art/ are large binaries and Perforce spends a long time thinking about them even though I've not touched them. Is there any way to have perforce merge/copy my directory (code/jorge) without it spending time trying to merge art/? Can I tell P4V to merge/copy only the code directory?
Related but not identical question: Perforce streams, exclude files from merge/copy
If you don't touch those files, it might be easier to not include them in your stream at all rather than manually exclude them every time you do a merge.
I.e. if your stream Paths currently says:
share ...
maybe it should instead be:
share code/jorge/...
or, if you need the art for builds but never need to modify it, you might consider doing something like:
import art/...
share code/...
I am not sure this is the recommended option but you can actually merge without using the "Stream to Stream" option but the standard "Specify source and target file" options, even if you are in a stream depot.
So you can select any subdirectory as your source like 'dev/code/jorge' and the same subdirectory as destination like "main/code/jorge' and it will only consider that directory. We do it routinely in my team because we have a big mono repo and have not taken the time to setup multiple depots when we migrated to Perforce.

TFS deleted my files when changing the mapping

I had quite a big solution with a lot of code here. Because of some issues with TFS I wanted to create a new 'clean' repository. I removed the mapping to the old repository, and tried creating a new mapping. This resulted in an error that there already was a mapping to my solution. I went to the Source Control Explorer -> Workspaces and deleted the mapping to my solution there. After that I was able to map my new repository to my solution.
But when I checked my hard disk I almost had a heart attack: TFS deleted ALL my code files! The directories and dependencies were still there, but all my project files, my solution file and all of the code was gone!
Please StackOverflow, help me out here! This is a LOT of work that is now gone and I really desperately need it back :(
Edit: I'm currently trying to recover my files with a couple of file recovery tools (like Recuva), but none of them can find any deleted changes. But the files are really gone, Windows search doesn't find them, and they aren't hidden either. Can anyone tell me why this is? Are the files still on my SSD then?
Source control systems like TFS all work along very similar lines. They treat the server's version of the code as "the code" - it's the master copy, and is "owned" by the server. You can then get a copy of the code on your PC (by adding a workspace mapping you tell it where you want it to put this copy). You can make changes to your copy of the code, and then check them in to apply them back to the master version of the code on the server.
So if you change a workspace mapping (e.g. change the location of your copy of the code from folder A to folder B), what you are telling the source control system is "please take away the copy of the code that is in location A, and put it in B". So this is why it deleted all "your" code. It wasn't "your" code, it was a copy of the server's code - you asked it to put it somewhere else on your PC ... so it did.
However, if you had edited any of the code in your workspace, the files would have been checked out, in which case TFS would have known that you had pending changes, and it shouldn't have deleted those files - it should have reported an error as you were trying to change a workspace mapping that included pending changes.
The only way this wouldn't happen is if you manually changed the files to be writable and made changes to them outside of Visual Studio/TFS, so that TFS did not know you had made the changes. If you "secretly" changed some files, TFS may have thought they were unchanged, and therefore permanently deleted them. These files may not show up in file recovery tools because by asking TFS to relocate the workspace you got it to delete the files and then immediately re-get them (into a new folder), which will almost certainly have overwritten the data of the deleted files.
If your changes might have been checked in, then you can find them like this: go to your Team Project in the TFS Source Control view. Right click the Project and choose the "View History" option. This will list all checkins to the project in reverse historical order - if you checked in, then you should see your checkins here. (You can double click any changeset entry in the history to view the list of files that were changed, and if you right click any file you can "Compare..." to see a diff that illustrates exactly what changes were made)
If the changes are not in your checkin history, then I'm afraid you've lost them.
You've probably already learned this, but it's important to learn to use tools like source control properly - they are useful and powerful tools, but they can be dangerous if you don't understand how they work.
If you checked all in before you removed the mapping. The source is almost in the repos. But if not it is already gone sorry :(
Sorry for your loss.
TFS didn't delete anything. You simply never checked it in. If TFS had "deleted" your code, then you would be able to see your code in the history in Source Control Explorer. You would see that there was a changeset with "Delete" operations against your code.
You would then be able to roll back that changeset and get all of your code.

Folders and files not showing in CVS Synchronize with Repository view in Eclipse

Going to the CVS repository perspective and viewing the files shows them, so they checked in just fine, and doing an update will bring them into the project. It is only the synchronize that is having problems.
I have noticed that, when synchronizing trees that do not contain source files such as *.java files causes the cvs synchronize view to look strange (there is an update to be done but it cannot specify the path). Usually, you would actually want to see what is updated..
So, the solution as per me is to perform a team->update on project root level, or to use another cvs client to make the update. (TortoiseCvs works)
I'm not sure if this is the problem, but do you realize files won't appear in the synchronize view if they are identical to the files in the repository?

SQLite database cached due to SVN

My iPhone application uses Core Data and a SQLite database; versions are being tracked using SVN. Adding data to the database is not reflected in the application. I make sure I delete the project out of the simulator and that the new database is added as a file to the project. I suspect the data is being cached in another location.
Please note, SVN shows no changes to the database, even when directly edited. Also, if I copy and paste the project to a new folder, delete the hidden svn folders, delete the build folders, edit the DB, delete the project out of the simulator, then compile and run, it works the first time. After that, the data again is cached in some unknown location.
Any ideas where this could be?
UPDATE:
The solution to this was to exit my SVN Client (Versions). I am still unsure of how this affected updates to the DB; I wouldn't think it would block or revert any changes. I am now able to edit and save changes.
Thanks everyone for the help.
Could be more than a couple of things going wrong here. If you have the SQLite DB added to your project by reference, and if you haven't made any code changes, then when you click "Build" you won't see your changed DB resource copied over. Basically, Xcode has long-standing problems sensing when (referenced) resources have changed. Doing a clean build is your nuclear option, as depending on your compilation time, it can take quite a while. A better option is just to delete the .app bundle out of the build directory. This doesn't take as long for Xcode to reconstruct, although if you have a lot of resources, it also can take a while. The best option (the one I use) is to leave a "dummy" file at the root level of the folder included by reference (let's say it's a blank text file), and when I update a resource, I will make a change to the dummy file, undo the change, and hit Save (inside Xcode). This triggers something in Xcode to recursively go through that included directory to see if anything's changed.
All that aside, if you are modifying the DB file, and SVN is telling you that you haven't made changes to it, you have some other problem going on. Simply put, are you certain that the DB file has been added and checked in already to SVN, so SVN knows about it? And are you certain you're editing the same file you're checking in SVN?
Could it be that the database is elsewhere? Have you tried opening the database manually to see if the right records are there?

Moving folder in SVN, having a bit of trouble

I have a project on codeplex and I'm trying to reorganise the tree structure so it makes a bit more sense and is easier to work with.
This is my current layout:
TopLevel
|-->src
|--->ProjectA //This is where all the files are held
|-->Core //plus three more folders
|-->MyProject.Core
|--->trunk
|-->src // I want to move all the folders and files in ProjectA into here
So I want to move all folders and files under ProjectA to ProjectA.Core/Trunk/src.
I checkout the whole source tree and right-clicked dragged the folders under ProjectA folder and selected "move versioned files here" into the src folder, that marked the folders in Project for deletion but the new files in src still had the green tick next to them and not the blue plus button.
After I commited the changes I had a look in the repo browser and saw that the folders hadn't been moved and were still in the ProjectA folder.
How can I move folders and the files in those folders to a different folder in subversion? Without loosing version history.
I'm using TortoiseSVN.
EDIT: Turns out it must have been codeplex, I moved my project to google code and everything works fine.
This type of reorganisation is easy to do with the Subversion command line client, which might be a viable option for you. Here's the commands that would do it (from the TopLevel directory):
svn mv src/ProjectA MyProject.Core/trunk/src/
svn ci -m "relocate ProjectA"
You can also combine both commands into one by using URLs as the source and destination, see the svn mv documentation for details.
I haven't found an easy way to do this sort of thing with TortoiseSVN, so when I need to I just use the command line client to do it.
I don't know what I was thinking when I suggested to export and import the files. I think I've been away from TortoiseSVN too long. I recall that tortoise svn actually has a really easy method of moving whole directories. It's not just obvious... but it's not clear why you can't get the result committed correctly to the repository. Presumably you did commit on the parent of all these folders.
Here's the summary:
You must select the folder and files you wish to move, and after doing so right click on the selection and drag it with the right button to the new location. You will get a context menu asking if you wish to relocate the files in the repository. This retains the history. Now your old files are marked for deletion and your new files should be marked as added. (I've found the status icons to be... not always representative of the true status). Commit this as one commit. I like to be picky and use check for modifications on the root of the checked out files, and then select exactly which changes I want to commit before doing so.
In the case of just moving one folder like this, open a window that is a parent to this folder, and another window that will be the new parent of this folder. Right click and drag all in one motion. I can't believe it takes this much text to describe a simple mouse action.
The standard strategy for dealing with nasty moves is, in the worst case, create all the new directories, move only the files from the old directories to the new directories, and then remove all of the old directories. This should get around almost any problem you encounter, and you can take shortcuts (moving entire directories and or trees) where that does work.
This will preserve history on all files. It will not preserve history on directory creations, but usually this is something you can live with, since you do have history for all of the file moves, which include the old and new directory names.