P4V provides information about each checked out file such as whether it is at the latest revision (out-of-date files have a yellow circle), and whether it needs to be resolved (question mark). Is there a way to get this info using the P4 command line client?
I've tried "p4 describe " and "p4 status", but these do not provide the info I'm looking for. Describe lists which revision each file is at, but not whether it is at the latest revision.
To see whether a file needs to be synced:
p4 sync -n FILE
To see whether a file needs to be resolved:
p4 resolve -n FILE
To see whether a file is open:
p4 opened FILE
To see all the revisions of a file:
p4 filelog FILE
etc
You can also do:
p4 fstat <flags> FILE
to get a giant dump of information about a file (formatted for easy parsing into a dictionary rather than human readability).
For a full list of commands, see:
p4 help commands
For more information on a particular command:
p4 help COMMAND
I have a situation where I'd like to diff two branches in Perforce. Normally I'd use diff2 to do a server-side diff but in this case the files on the branches are so large that the diff2 call ends up filling up /tmp on my server trying to diff them and the diff fails.
I can't bring down my server to rectify this so I'm looking at checking out the the content to disk and using diff on the command line to inspect and compare the content.
The trouble is: most of the files have RCS keywords in them that are being expanded.
I know can remove keyword expansion from a file by opening the files for edit and removing the -k attribute from the files in the process, but that seems a bit brute force. I was hoping I could just tell the p4 sync command not to expand the keywords on checkout. I can't seem to find a way to do this? Is it possible?
As a possible alternative solution, does anyone know if you can tell p4 diff2 which directory to use for temporary space when you call it? If I could tell it to use abundant NAS space instead of /tmp on the Perforce server I might be able to make it work.
I'm using 2010.x version of Perforce if that changes the answer in any way.
There's no way I know of to disable keyword expansion on sync. Here's what I would try:
1) Create a branch spec between the two sets of files
2) Run "p4 files //path/to/files/... | cut -d '#' -f 1 > tmp"
Path to files above should be the right hand side of the branch spec you created
3) p4 -x tmp diff2 -b
This tells p4 to iterate over the lines of text in 'tmp' and treat them as arguments to the command. I think /tmp on your server will get cleared in-between each file this way, preventing it from filling up.
I unfortunately don't have files large enough to test that it works, so this is entirely theoretical.
To change the temp directory that p4d uses just TEMP or TMP to a different path and restart p4d. If you're on Windows make sure to call 'p4 set -S perforce TMP=' to set variable for the Perforce service; without the -S perforce you'll just set it for the current user.
Short version:
After branching in P4, how can I find out the "source" changelist of the branch?
Long version:
Let's say I have a main branch of my project at
//project/main/...
The latest changelist submitted here is #123, when I decide to create a branch for release 1.0 in
//project/1.0/...
From P4V, a new changelist is created (say #130), resolved and submitted.
From the CLI, it would look something like this:
p4 integrate -c 123 -o //project/main/... //project/1.0/...
p4 submit
Later, I look at the changelists under //project/1.0, and see the #130 changelist containing a lot of branched files.
How can I find out the changelist no. that this was originally branched from (that is, #123) ?
p4 changes will display a list of submitted changelists, optionally filtered to a specific path.
p4 changes //project/main/...
Change 123 ... 'Very last change.'
Change 122 ... 'Next-to-last change.'
Change 100 ... 'Only two changes to go...'
...
No surprise there, but, as you've found, p4 changes is less helpful when you integrate all those changes in a single change:
p4 changes //project/1.0/...
Change 130 ... 'Integrated everything from main.'
The trick is to use the -i option which includes any changelists integrated into the specified files.
p4 changes -i //project/1.0/...
Change 130 ... 'Integrated everything from main.'
Change 123 ... 'Very last change.'
Change 122 ... 'Next-to-last change.'
Change 100 ... 'Only two changes to go...'
...
To get exactly what you want (123) you'll need to write a script which filters the output from p4 changes -i //project/1.0/... to remove any change listed by p4 changes //project/1.0/... (and then take the most recent remaining change).
(When exploring, I frequently also find the -m max option useful. This limits changes to the 'max' most recent. This helps your output not flow offscreen when there are many changes.)
I don't know of any simple command that performs what you would like to do. If you are willing to script a little bit and the command doesn't have to execute fast you could perhaps try to script something like the following for all branched files:
Find the source file/revision for a target file.
p4 filelog //project/1.1/foo.bar#1
//project/1.1/foo.bar
... #1 change 6416 branch on 2009/07/10 by foo#bar (text) 'Release 1.1'
... ... branch from //project/main/foo.bar#1,#2
Get the change list at which the source file/revision was submitted.
p4 fstat //project/main/foo.bar#2
... depotFile //project/main/foo.bar
... headAction edit
... headType text
... headTime 1201771167
... headRev 2
... headChange 5353
... headModTime 1201770971
Repeat for all files in branch and select the highest change no (headChange above), which should be the latest change submitted to the parent before branching for that specific file. You could get a complete listing of all branched files using e.g. "p4 files //project/1.0/...#1".
(or perhaps take the easy way out and ask Perforce support)
Since none of the answers thus far provide the code for finding the source or root changelist of a branch, I thought I'd provide a one-liner to do just that. This approach is based on #Cwan's suggestion, and will print the "parent" changelist from which the branch was created. The FIRST_BRANCH_CL argument needs to be replaced with the branch creation changelist (i.e. the first changelist submitted to the new branch). As a concrete example, replacing FIRST_BRANCH_CL with 130 from the original question, this one-liner would output 123.
p4 describe -s FIRST_BRANCH_CL | perl -lne 'if(/^\.\.\. (.+#[0-9]+) .+$/) {print quotemeta $1}' | xargs p4 filelog -m1 | perl -lne 'if(/^\.\.\. \.\.\. branch from (.+#[0-9]+)/) {print quotemeta $1}' | xargs p4 fstat | perl -lne 'if(/^\.\.\. headChange (\d+)/) {$MaxCL=$1 if($1 > $MaxCL)} END {print $MaxCL}'
Short answer:
Use the Revision Graph in P4V is step back through time and investigate the integration history. Video on the Perforce website.
I have successfully used the revision graph on branches with thousands of files to track when an particular change was integrated into a branch. That is why I recommended it and linked to a training video as most people under-estimate it because they do not know how to use it.
Long answer:
... [Removed]
UPDATE: As the Revision Graph apparently is unfeasible, you can perhaps solve this using a process/policy, i.e., when you perform the integrate, add a note in the description "Branched # CL 123". We used this approach ourselves when integrating from a trunk to release lines.
If you use the history tab in p4v it will show you all changelists submitted against a branch, so look at this for
//project/1.0/...
once you have found the oldest submitted changelist, then on any one the files in that changelist view the Revision Graph for it, this will show you the branch that the file (and the rest of the files) were integrated from.
I'll see if I can come back with the p4 commands to do the same thing.
Updated Answer: I think this will work. Try this:
p4 interchanges from_branch to_branch
This will show unintegrated changes from your main branch to your release branch. I believe you can use the top changelist number minus 1 to find your source changelist. interchanges is an undocumented Perforce CLI feature. To find out more, type p4 help interchanges to find out more about this command.
Again, I think this will work. There may be some special cases where it will not, but it's my best guess to a tough and important problem.
"p4 integrated" worked for me. Look for "copy from" in the description
I am creating some build scripts that interact with Perforce and I would like to mark for delete a few files. What exactly is the P4 syntax using the command line?
p4 delete filename
(output of p4 help delete)
delete -- Open an existing file to delete it from the depot
p4 delete [ -c changelist# ] [ -n ] file ...
Opens a file that currently exists in the depot for deletion.
If the file is present on the client it is removed. If a pending
changelist number is given with the -c flag the opened file is
associated with that changelist, otherwise it is associated with
the 'default' pending changelist.
Files that are deleted generally do not appear on the have list.
The -n flag displays what would be opened for delete without actually
changing any files or metadata.
Teach a man to fish:
p4 help - gets you general command
syntax
p4 help commands - lists the
commands
p4 help <command name> -
provides detailed help for a specific
command
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.062/manuals/boilerplates/quickstart.html
Deleting files
To delete files from both the Perforce server and your workspace, issue the p4 delete command. For example:
p4 delete demo.txt readme.txt
The specified files are removed from your workspace and marked for deletion from the server. If you decide you don't want to delete the files after all, issue the p4 revert command. When you revert files opened for delete, Perforce restores them to your workspace.
Admitted - it takes a (small) number of steps to find the (excellent!) Perforce user guide online in the version that matches your installation and get to the chapter with the information you need.
Whenever I find myself in need of anything about the p4 command line client, I rely on the help Perforce have built into it. Accessing it could not be easier:
on the command line, enter p4
This gets you to the information Michael Burr has shown in his answer (and some more).
If you do not get a help screen right away, something is wrong with our client configuration, e.g. P4PORT is not set properly. You obviously need to fix that first.
Anybody have a script or alias to find untracked (really: unadded) files in a Perforce tree?
EDIT: I updated the accepted answer on this one since it looks like P4V added support for this in the January 2009 release.
EDIT: Please use p4 status now. There is no need for jumping through hoops anymore. See #ColonelPanic's answer.
In the Jan 2009 version of P4V, you can right-click on any folder in your workspace tree and click "reconcile offline work..."
This will do a little processing then bring up a split-tree view of files that are not checked out but have differences from the depot version, or not checked in at all. There may even be a few other categories it brings up.
You can right-click on files in this view and check them out, add them, or even revert them.
It's a very handy tool that's saved my ass a few times.
EDIT: ah the question asked about scripts specifically, but I'll leave this answer here just in case.
On linux, or if you have gnu-tools installed on windows:
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 p4 fstat >/dev/null
This will show an error message for every unaccounted file. If you want to capture that output:
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 p4 fstat >/dev/null 2>mylogfile
Under Unix:
find -type f ! -name '*~' -print0| xargs -0 p4 fstat 2>&1|awk '/no such file/{print $1}'
This will print out a list of files that are not added in your client or the Perforce depot. I've used ! -name '*~' to exclude files ending with ~.
Ahh, one of the Perforce classics :) Yes, it really sucks that there is STILL no easy way for this built into the default commands.
The easiest way is to run a command to find all files under your clients root, and then attempt to add them to the depot. You'll end up with a changelist of all new files and existing files are ignored.
E.g dir /s /b /A-D | p4 -x - add
(use 'find . -type f -print' from a nix command line).
If you want a physical list (in the console or file) then you can pipe on the results of a diff (or add if you also want them in a changelist).
If you're running this within P4Win you can use $r to substitute the client root of the current workspace.
Is there an analogue of svn status or git status?
Yes, BUT.
As of Perforce version 2012.1, there's the command p4 status and in P4V 'reconcile offline work'. However, they're both very slow. To exclude irrelevant files you'll need to write a p4ignore.txt file per https://stackoverflow.com/a/13126496/284795
2021-07-16: THIS ANSWER MAY BE OBSOLETE.
I am reasonably sure that it was accurate in 2016, for whatever version of Perforce I was using them (which was not necessarily the most current). But it seems that this problem or design limitation has been remedied in subsequent releases of Perforce. I do not know what the stack overflow etiquette for this is -- should this answer be removed?
2016 ANSWER
I feel impelled to add an answer, since the accepted answer, and some of the others, have what I think is a significant problem: they do not understand the difference between a read-only query command, and a command that makes changes.
I don't expect any credit for this answer, but I hope that it will help others avoid wasting time and making mistakes by following the accepted but IMHO incorrect answer.
---+ BRIEF
Probably the most convenient way to find all untracked files in a perforce workspace is p4 reconcile -na.
-a says "give me files that are not in the repository, i.e. that should be added".
-n says "make no changes" - i.e. a dry-run. (Although the messages may say "opened for add", mentally you must interpret that as "would be opened for add if not -n")
Probably the most convenient way to find all local changes made while offline - not just files that might need to be added, but also files that might need to be deleted, or which have been changed without being opened for editing via p4 edit, is p4 reconcile -n.
Several answers provided scripts, often involving p4 fstat. While I have not verified all of those scripts, I often use similar scripts to make up for the deficiencies of perforce commands such as p4 reconcile -n - e.g. often I find that I want local paths rather than Perforce depot paths or workspace paths.
---+ WARNING
p4 status is NOT the counterpart to the status commands on other version control systems.
p4 status is NOT a read-only query. p4 status actually finds the same sort of changes that p4 reconcile does, and adds them to the repository. p4 status does not seem to have a -n dry-run option like p4 reconcile does.
If you do p4 status, look at the files and think "Oh, I don't need those", then you will have to p4 revert them if you want to continue editing in the same workspace. Or else the changes that p4 status added to your changeset will be checked in the next time.
There seems to be little or no reason to use p4 status rather than p4 reconcile -n, except for some details of local workspace vs depot pathname.
I can only imagine that whoever chose 'status' for a non-read-only command had limited command of the English language and other version control tools.
---+ P4V GUI
In the GUI p4v, the reconcile command finds local changes that may need to be added, deleted, or opened for editing. Fortunately it does not add them to a changelist by default; but you still may want to be careful to close the reconcile window after inspecting it, if you don't want to commit the changes.
Alternatively from P4Win, use the ""Local Files not in Depot" option on the left hand view panel.
I don't use P4V much, but I think the equivalent is to select "Hide Local Workspace Files" in the filter dropdown of the Workspace view tab.p4 help fstat
In P4V 2015.1 you'll find these options under the filter button like this:
I use the following in my tool that backs up any files in the workspace that differ from the repository (for Windows). It handles some odd cases that Perforce doesn't like much, like embedded blanks, stars, percents, and hashmarks:
dir /S /B /A-D | sed -e "s/%/%25/g" -e "s/#/%40/g" -e "s/#/%23/g" -e "s/\*/%2A/g" | p4 -x- have 1>NUL:
"dir /S /B /A-D" lists all files at or below this folder (/S) in "bare" format (/B) excluding directories (/A-D). The "sed" changes dangerous characters to their "%xx" form (a la HTML), and the "p4 have" command checks this list ("-x-") against the server discarding anything about files it actually locates in the repository ("1>NUL:"). The result is a bunch of lines like:
Z:\No_Backup\Workspaces\full\depot\Projects\Archerfish\Portal\Main\admin\html\images\nav\navxx_background.gif - file(s) not on client.
Et voilà!
Quick 'n Dirty: In p4v right-click on the folder in question and add all files underneath it to a new changelist. The changelist will now contain all files which are not currently part of the depot.
The following commands produce status-like output, but none is quite equivalent to svn status or git status, providing a one-line summary of the status of each file:
p4 status
p4 opened
p4 diff -ds
I don't have enough reputation points to comment, but Ross' solution also lists files that are open for add. You probably do not want to use his answer to clean your workspace.
The following uses p4 fstat (thanks Mark Harrison) instead of p4 have, and lists the files that aren't in the depot and aren't open for add.
dir /S /B /A-D | sed -e "s/%/%25/g" -e "s/#/%40/g" -e "s/#/%23/g" -e "s/\*/%2A/g" | p4 -x- fstat 2>&1 | sed -n -e "s/ - no such file[(]s[)]\.$//gp"
===Jac
Fast method, but little orthodox. If the codebase doesn't add new files / change view too often, you could create a local 'git' repository out of your checkout. From a clean perforce sync, git init, add and commit all files locally. Git status is fast and will show files not previously committed.
The p4 fstat command lets you test if a file exists in the workspace, combine with find to locate files to check as in the following Perl example:
// throw the output of p4 fstat to a 'output file'
// find:
// -type f :- only look at files,
// -print0 :- terminate strings with \0s to support filenames with spaces
// xargs:
// Groups its input into command lines,
// -0 :- read input strings terminated with \0s
// p4:
// fstat :- fetch workspace stat on files
my $status=system "(find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 p4 fstat > /dev/null) >& $outputFile";
// read output file
open F1, $outputFile or die "$!\n";
// iterate over all the lines in F1
while (<F1>) {
// remove trailing whitespace
chomp $_;
// grep lines which has 'no such file' or 'not in client'
if($_ =~ m/no such file/ || $_ =~ m/not in client/){
// Remove the content after '-'
$_=~ s/-\s.*//g;
// below line is optional. Check ur output file for more clarity.
$_=~ s/^.\///g;
print "$_\n";
}
}
close F1;
Or you can use p4 reconcile -n -m ...
If it is 'opened for delete' then it has been removed from the workspace. Note that the above command is running in preview mode (-n).
I needed something that would work in either Linux, Mac or Windows. So I wrote a Python script for it. The basic idea is to iterate through files and execute p4 fstat on each. (of course ignoring dependencies and tmp folders)
You can find it here: https://gist.github.com/givanse/8c69f55f8243733702cf7bcb0e9290a9
This command can give you a list of files that needs to be added, edited or removed:
p4 status -aed ...
you can use them separately too
p4 status -a ...
p4 status -e ...
p4 status -d ...
In P4V, under the "View" menu item choose "Files in Folder" which brings up a new tab in the right pane.
To the far right of the tabs there is a little icon that brings up a window called "Files in Folder" with 2 icons.
Select the left icon that looks like a funnel and you will see several options. Choose "Show items not in Depot" and all the files in the folder will show up.
Then just right-click on the file you want to add and choose "Mark for Add...". You can verify it is there in the "Pending" tab.
Just submit as normal (Ctrl+S).