What are your Perforce browsing / branching practices?
If by "view" you mean the workspace (aka client-spec), then I try to have one client spec for every branch I work on. I assume by industry you mean that you have a typical system where you have a backbone, development branches and maybe branches released as well?
The reason for keeping the 1-1 compliance is for simple simplification. It can also prevent accidents - for example, when I'm in a development client spec, I know I can't accidentally look at or change a file of the same name in a different branch. This can be a big help when you are deep in the deep source folder hierarchy.
Keeping the look "tight" is generally good practice at Peforce - like nothing else. This helps the performance of the server, which in turn helps the performance of Perforce on your client machine. But aside from performance, I think the concept of just what you need to see - letting the computer do the filtering for you - is generally a good thing. This allows you to focus on the work at hand without distraction.
I don't have hard-to-switch workspaces, and there are several ways to do this depending on your circumstances and preferences. For example, P4V has a simple dropdown at the top of the left pane. What are the difficulties when switching workspaces?
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I'm not sure what switching between views / captives is.
It's easy. Assuming you are using the command line, create p4config.txt
in the root directory of each client spec (aka view). In each, p4config.txt
set the variable P4CLIENT
to the name of the client specification. You can leave the rest of the variables as they are.
Here's my example p4config.txt
:
P4USER=deepaknag
P4PORT=SJCPperforce01:1666
P4CLIENT=deepaknag_fbsd
Then set your environment variable P4CONFIG
like this:
export P4CONFIG=p4config.txt
It now automatically uses the "correct" client specification when changing client directories. Try to do:
p4 info
in your client directories for verification.
This is also documented in the Perforce Knowledge Base (works with p4
for me).
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- Here's what Perforce says about Header .
- Also Eric Sink a good discussion .
- I am creating a single view with access to many branches. Since branches are displayed in all views by default, you want the custom area to be off the main line.
- Many engineers are more comfortable with the concept of branches as they exist in all SCM systems. But opinions can be relevant if they haven't seen the concept.
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