Perforce provides access to the repository and tracks state on a per-client basis. In Perforce terms, a client is a specification that maps files and directories from the repository to the local machine. Each user can have multiple clients, and each client can access different or overlapping parts of the repository. The client also specifies the root directory of the file tree that it maps, and it specifies the machine that the tree lives on. Thus, working on multiple machines requires that multiple clients be used.
Clients may be accessed via p4 client.
Running this command with no arguments will bring up a client
template in an editor, allowing you to create a new client for
your work. The important fields in this template are explained
below:
Client:This is the name of the client spec. It can be
anything you want, but it must be unique within the
Perforce server. A naming
convention that is commonly used is
username_machinename
Description:This can contain a simple text description to help identify the client.
Root:This is the local directory that will serve as the root directory of all the files in the client mapping. This should be a unique location in your filesystem that does not overlap with other files or Perforce clients.
Options:Most of the default options are fine, though it is
usually a good idea to make sure that the
compress and rmdir
options are present and do not have a
no prefix on them. Details about each
option are in the Perforce
docs.
LineEnd:This handles CR-LF conversions and should be left to the default unless you have special needs for it.
View:This is where the server-to-local file mappings go. The default is
//depot/... //client/...This will map the entire
Perforce repository to the
Root directory of your client.
DO NOT USE THIS DEFAULT! The FreeBSD
repo is huge, and trying to map and sync it all will take
an enormous amount of resources. Instead, only map the
section of the repo that you intend to work on. For
example, there is the smpng project tree at
//depot/projects/smpng. A mapping
for this might look like:
//depot/projects/smpng/... //client/...The ... should be taken literally.
It is a Perforce idiom for
saying “this directory and all files and directories
below it.”
A Perforce “view” can contain multiple mappings. Say you want to map in both the SMPng tree and the NFS tree. Your View might look like:
//depot/projects/smpng/... //client/smpng/... //depot/projects/nfs/... //client/nfs/...
Remember that the client is
the name of the client that was specified in the
Client section, but in the
View it also resolves to the directory
that was specified in the Root
section.
Also note that the same file or directory cannot be mapped multiple times in a single view. The following is illegal and will produce undefined results:
//depot/projects/smpng/... //client/smpng-foo/... //depot/projects/smpng/... //client/smpng-bar/...
Views are a tricky part of the learning experience with Perforce, so do not be afraid to ask questions.
Existing clients can be listed via p4
clients. They can be viewed without being modified
via p4 client -o
.clientname
Whenever you are interacting with files in
Perforce, the P4CLIENT
environment variable must be set to the name of the client that
you are using, like so:
%export P4CLIENT=myclientname
Note that client mappings in the repository are not exclusive; multiple clients can map in the same part of the repository. This allows multiple people to access and modify the same parts of the repository, allowing a team of people to work together on the same code.
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <[email protected]>.
Send questions about this document to <[email protected]>.