Perforce is a very popular version-control system in corporate environments. It’s been around since 1995, which makes it the oldest system covered in this chapter. As such, it’s designed with the constraints of its day; it assumes you’re always connected to a single central server, and only one version is kept on the local disk. To be sure, its features and constraints are well-suited to several specific problems, but there are lots of projects using Perforce where Git would actually work better.
There are two options if you’d like to mix your use of Perforce and Git. The first one we’ll cover is the “Git Fusion” bridge from the makers of Perforce, which lets you expose subtrees of your Perforce depot as read-write Git repositories. The second is git-p4, a client-side bridge that lets you use Git as a Perforce client, without requiring any reconfiguration of the Perforce server.
Perforce provides a product called Git Fusion (available at https://www.perforce.com/manuals/git-fusion/), which synchronizes a Perforce server with Git repositories on the server side.
For our examples, we’ll be using the easiest installation method for Git Fusion, which is downloading a virtual machine that runs the Perforce daemon and Git Fusion. You can get the virtual machine image from https://www.perforce.com/downloads, and once it’s finished downloading, import it into your favorite virtualization software (we’ll use VirtualBox).
Upon first starting the machine, it asks you to customize the password for three Linux users (root, perforce, and git), and provide an instance name, which can be used to distinguish this installation from others on the same network.
When that has all completed, you’ll see this:
You should take note of the IP address that’s shown here, we’ll be using it later on.
Next, we’ll create a Perforce user.
Select the “Login” option at the bottom and press enter (or SSH to the machine), and log in as root.
Then use these commands to create a user:
$ p4 -p localhost:1666 -u super user -f john
$ p4 -p localhost:1666 -u john passwd
$ exitThe first one will open a VI editor to customize the user, but you can accept the defaults by typing :wq and hitting enter.
The second one will prompt you to enter a password twice.
That’s all we need to do with a shell prompt, so exit out of the session.
The next thing you’ll need to do to follow along is to tell Git not to verify SSL certificates. The Git Fusion image comes with a certificate, but it’s for a domain that won’t match your virtual machine’s IP address, so Git will reject the HTTPS connection. If this is going to be a permanent installation, consult the Perforce Git Fusion manual to install a different certificate; for our example purposes, this will suffice:
$ export GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=trueNow we can test that everything is working.
$ git clone https://10.0.1.254/Talkhouse
Cloning into 'Talkhouse'...
Username for 'https://10.0.1.254': john
Password for 'https://[email protected]':
remote: Counting objects: 630, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (581/581), done.
remote: Total 630 (delta 172), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (630/630), 1.22 MiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (172/172), done.
Checking connectivity... done.The virtual-machine image comes equipped with a sample project that you can clone.
Here we’re cloning over HTTPS, with the john user that we created above; Git asks for credentials for this connection, but the credential cache will allow us to skip this step for any subsequent requests.
Once you’ve got Git Fusion installed, you’ll want to tweak the configuration.
This is actually fairly easy to do using your favorite Perforce client; just map the //.git-fusion directory on the Perforce server into your workspace.
The file structure looks like this:
$ tree
.
├── objects
│ ├── repos
│ │ └── [...]
│ └── trees
│ └── [...]
│
├── p4gf_config
├── repos
│ └── Talkhouse
│ └── p4gf_config
└── users
└── p4gf_usermap
498 directories, 287 filesThe objects directory is used internally by Git Fusion to map Perforce objects to Git and vice versa, you won’t have to mess with anything in there.
There’s a global p4gf_config file in this directory, as well as one for each repository – these are the configuration files that determine how Git Fusion behaves.
Let’s take a look at the file in the root:
[repo-creation]
charset = utf8
[git-to-perforce]
change-owner = author
enable-git-branch-creation = yes
enable-swarm-reviews = yes
enable-git-merge-commits = yes
enable-git-submodules = yes
preflight-commit = none
ignore-author-permissions = no
read-permission-check = none
git-merge-avoidance-after-change-num = 12107
[perforce-to-git]
http-url = none
ssh-url = none
[@features]
imports = False
chunked-push = False
matrix2 = False
parallel-push = False
[authentication]
email-case-sensitivity = noWe won’t go into the meanings of these flags here, but note that this is just an INI-formatted text file, much like Git uses for configuration.
This file specifies the global options, which can then be overridden by repository-specific configuration files, like repos/Talkhouse/p4gf_config.
If you open this file, you’ll see a [@repo] section with some settings that are different from the global defaults.
You’ll also see sections that look like this:
[Talkhouse-master]
git-branch-name = master
view = //depot/Talkhouse/main-dev/... ...This is a mapping between a Perforce branch and a Git branch.
The section can be named whatever you like, so long as the name is unique.
git-branch-name lets you convert a depot path that would be cumbersome under Git to a more friendly name.
The view setting controls how Perforce files are mapped into the Git repository, using the standard view mapping syntax.
More than one mapping can be specified, like in this example:
[multi-project-mapping]
git-branch-name = master
view = //depot/project1/main/... project1/...
//depot/project2/mainline/... project2/...This way, if your normal workspace mapping includes changes in the structure of the directories, you can replicate that with a Git repository.
The last file we’ll discuss is users/p4gf_usermap, which maps Perforce users to Git users, and which you may not even need.
When converting from a Perforce changeset to a Git commit, Git Fusion’s default behavior is to look up the Perforce user, and use the email address and full name stored there for the author/committer field in Git.
When converting the other way, the default is to look up the Perforce user with the email address stored in the Git commit’s author field, and submit the changeset as that user (with permissions applying).
In most cases, this behavior will do just fine, but consider the following mapping file:
john [email protected] "John Doe"
john [email protected] "John Doe"
bob [email protected] "Anon X. Mouse"
joe [email protected] "Anon Y. Mouse"Each line is of the format <user> <email> "<full name>", and creates a single user mapping.
The first two lines map two distinct email addresses to the same Perforce user account.
This is useful if you’ve created Git commits under several different email addresses (or change email addresses), but want them to be mapped to the same Perforce user.
When creating a Git commit from a Perforce changeset, the first line matching the Perforce user is used for Git authorship information.
The last two lines mask Bob and Joe’s actual names and email addresses from the Git commits that are created. This is nice if you want to open-source an internal project, but don’t want to publish your employee directory to the entire world. Note that the email addresses and full names should be unique, unless you want all the Git commits to be attributed to a single fictional author.
Perforce Git Fusion is a two-way bridge between Perforce and Git version control. Let’s have a look at how it feels to work from the Git side. We’ll assume we’ve mapped in the “Jam” project using a configuration file as shown above, which we can clone like this:
$ git clone https://10.0.1.254/Jam
Cloning into 'Jam'...
Username for 'https://10.0.1.254': john
Password for 'https://[email protected]':
remote: Counting objects: 2070, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1704/1704), done.
Receiving objects: 100% (2070/2070), 1.21 MiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
remote: Total 2070 (delta 1242), reused 0 (delta 0)
Resolving deltas: 100% (1242/1242), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
$ git branch -a
* master
remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
remotes/origin/master
remotes/origin/rel2.1
$ git log --oneline --decorate --graph --all
* 0a38c33 (origin/rel2.1) Create Jam 2.1 release branch.
| * d254865 (HEAD, origin/master, origin/HEAD, master) Upgrade to latest metrowerks on Beos -- the Intel one.
| * bd2f54a Put in fix for jam's NT handle leak.
| * c0f29e7 Fix URL in a jam doc
| * cc644ac Radstone's lynx port.
[...]The first time you do this, it may take some time. What’s happening is that Git Fusion is converting all the applicable changesets in the Perforce history into Git commits. This happens locally on the server, so it’s relatively fast, but if you have a lot of history, it can still take some time. Subsequent fetches do incremental conversion, so it’ll feel more like Git’s native speed.
As you can see, our repository looks exactly like any other Git repository you might work with.
There are three branches, and Git has helpfully created a local master branch that tracks origin/master.
Let’s do a bit of work, and create a couple of new commits:
# ...
$ git log --oneline --decorate --graph --all
* cfd46ab (HEAD, master) Add documentation for new feature
* a730d77 Whitespace
* d254865 (origin/master, origin/HEAD) Upgrade to latest metrowerks on Beos -- the Intel one.
* bd2f54a Put in fix for jam's NT handle leak.
[...]We have two new commits. Now let’s check if anyone else has been working:
$ git fetch
remote: Counting objects: 5, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Total 3 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
From https://10.0.1.254/Jam
d254865..6afeb15 master -> origin/master
$ git log --oneline --decorate --graph --all
* 6afeb15 (origin/master, origin/HEAD) Update copyright
| * cfd46ab (HEAD, master) Add documentation for new feature
| * a730d77 Whitespace
|/
* d254865 Upgrade to latest metrowerks on Beos -- the Intel one.
* bd2f54a Put in fix for jam's NT handle leak.
[...]It looks like someone was!
You wouldn’t know it from this view, but the 6afeb15 commit was actually created using a Perforce client.
It just looks like another commit from Git’s point of view, which is exactly the point.
Let’s see how the Perforce server deals with a merge commit:
$ git merge origin/master
Auto-merging README
Merge made by the 'recursive' strategy.
README | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
$ git push
Counting objects: 9, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done.
Writing objects: 100% (9/9), 917 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 9 (delta 6), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Perforce: 100% (3/3) Loading commit tree into memory...
remote: Perforce: 100% (5/5) Finding child commits...
remote: Perforce: Running git fast-export...
remote: Perforce: 100% (3/3) Checking commits...
remote: Processing will continue even if connection is closed.
remote: Perforce: 100% (3/3) Copying changelists...
remote: Perforce: Submitting new Git commit objects to Perforce: 4
To https://10.0.1.254/Jam
6afeb15..89cba2b master -> masterGit thinks it worked.
Let’s take a look at the history of the README file from Perforce’s point of view, using the revision graph feature of p4v:
If you’ve never seen this view before, it may seem confusing, but it shows the same concepts as a graphical viewer for Git history.
We’re looking at the history of the README file, so the directory tree at top left only shows that file as it surfaces in various branches.
At top right, we have a visual graph of how different revisions of the file are related, and the big-picture view of this graph is at bottom right.
The rest of the view is given to the details view for the selected revision (2 in this case).
One thing to notice is that the graph looks exactly like the one in Git’s history.
Perforce didn’t have a named branch to store the 1 and 2 commits, so it made an “anonymous” branch in the .git-fusion directory to hold it.
This will also happen for named Git branches that don’t correspond to a named Perforce branch (and you can later map them to a Perforce branch using the configuration file).
Most of this happens behind the scenes, but the end result is that one person on a team can be using Git, another can be using Perforce, and neither of them will know about the other’s choice.
If you have (or can get) access to your Perforce server, Git Fusion is a great way to make Git and Perforce talk to each other. There’s a bit of configuration involved, but the learning curve isn’t very steep. This is one of the few sections in this chapter where cautions about using Git’s full power will not appear. That’s not to say that Perforce will be happy with everything you throw at it – if you try to rewrite history that’s already been pushed, Git Fusion will reject it – but Git Fusion tries very hard to feel native. You can even use Git submodules (though they’ll look strange to Perforce users), and merge branches (this will be recorded as an integration on the Perforce side).
If you can’t convince the administrator of your server to set up Git Fusion, there is still a way to use these tools together.
Git-p4 is a two-way bridge between Git and Perforce. It runs entirely inside your Git repository, so you won’t need any kind of access to the Perforce server (other than user credentials, of course). Git-p4 isn’t as flexible or complete a solution as Git Fusion, but it does allow you to do most of what you’d want to do without being invasive to the server environment.
|
Note
|
You’ll need the |
For example purposes, we’ll be running the Perforce server from the Git Fusion OVA as shown above, but we’ll bypass the Git Fusion server and go directly to the Perforce version control.
In order to use the p4 command-line client (which git-p4 depends on), you’ll need to set a couple of environment variables:
$ export P4PORT=10.0.1.254:1666
$ export P4USER=johnAs with anything in Git, the first command is to clone:
$ git p4 clone //depot/www/live www-shallow
Importing from //depot/www/live into www-shallow
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/www-shallow/.git/
Doing initial import of //depot/www/live/ from revision #head into refs/remotes/p4/masterThis creates what in Git terms is a “shallow” clone; only the very latest Perforce revision is imported into Git; remember, Perforce isn’t designed to give every revision to every user. This is enough to use Git as a Perforce client, but for other purposes it’s not enough.
Once it’s finished, we have a fully-functional Git repository:
$ cd myproject
$ git log --oneline --all --graph --decorate
* 70eaf78 (HEAD, p4/master, p4/HEAD, master) Initial import of //depot/www/live/ from the state at revision #headNote how there’s a “p4” remote for the Perforce server, but everything else looks like a standard clone. Actually, that’s a bit misleading; there isn’t actually a remote there.
$ git remote -vNo remotes exist in this repository at all.
Git-p4 has created some refs to represent the state of the server, and they look like remote refs to git log, but they’re not managed by Git itself, and you can’t push to them.
Okay, let’s do some work. Let’s assume you’ve made some progress on a very important feature, and you’re ready to show it to the rest of your team.
$ git log --oneline --all --graph --decorate
* 018467c (HEAD, master) Change page title
* c0fb617 Update link
* 70eaf78 (p4/master, p4/HEAD) Initial import of //depot/www/live/ from the state at revision #headWe’ve made two new commits that we’re ready to submit to the Perforce server. Let’s check if anyone else was working today:
$ git p4 sync
git p4 sync
Performing incremental import into refs/remotes/p4/master git branch
Depot paths: //depot/www/live/
Import destination: refs/remotes/p4/master
Importing revision 12142 (100%)
$ git log --oneline --all --graph --decorate
* 75cd059 (p4/master, p4/HEAD) Update copyright
| * 018467c (HEAD, master) Change page title
| * c0fb617 Update link
|/
* 70eaf78 Initial import of //depot/www/live/ from the state at revision #headLooks like they were, and master and p4/master have diverged.
Perforce’s branching system is nothing like Git’s, so submitting merge commits doesn’t make any sense.
Git-p4 recommends that you rebase your commits, and even comes with a shortcut to do so:
$ git p4 rebase
Performing incremental import into refs/remotes/p4/master git branch
Depot paths: //depot/www/live/
No changes to import!
Rebasing the current branch onto remotes/p4/master
First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
Applying: Update link
Applying: Change page title
index.html | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)You can probably tell from the output, but git p4 rebase is a shortcut for git p4 sync followed by git rebase p4/master.
It’s a bit smarter than that, especially when working with multiple branches, but this is a good approximation.
Now our history is linear again, and we’re ready to contribute our changes back to Perforce.
The git p4 submit command will try to create a new Perforce revision for every Git commit between p4/master and master.
Running it drops us into our favorite editor, and the contents of the file look something like this:
# A Perforce Change Specification.
#
# Change: The change number. 'new' on a new changelist.
# Date: The date this specification was last modified.
# Client: The client on which the changelist was created. Read-only.
# User: The user who created the changelist.
# Status: Either 'pending' or 'submitted'. Read-only.
# Type: Either 'public' or 'restricted'. Default is 'public'.
# Description: Comments about the changelist. Required.
# Jobs: What opened jobs are to be closed by this changelist.
# You may delete jobs from this list. (New changelists only.)
# Files: What opened files from the default changelist are to be added
# to this changelist. You may delete files from this list.
# (New changelists only.)
Change: new
Client: john_bens-mbp_8487
User: john
Status: new
Description:
Update link
Files:
//depot/www/live/index.html # edit
######## git author [email protected] does not match your p4 account.
######## Use option --preserve-user to modify authorship.
######## Variable git-p4.skipUserNameCheck hides this message.
######## everything below this line is just the diff #######
--- //depot/www/live/index.html 2014-08-31 18:26:05.000000000 0000
+++ /Users/ben/john_bens-mbp_8487/john_bens-mbp_8487/depot/www/live/index.html 2014-08-31 18:26:05.000000000 0000
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@
</td>
<td valign=top>
Source and documentation for
-<a href="http://www.perforce.com/jam/jam.html">
+<a href="jam.html">
Jam/MR</a>,
a software build tool.
</td>This is mostly the same content you’d see by running p4 submit, except the stuff at the end which git-p4 has helpfully included.
Git-p4 tries to honor your Git and Perforce settings individually when it has to provide a name for a commit or changeset, but in some cases you want to override it.
For example, if the Git commit you’re importing was written by a contributor who doesn’t have a Perforce user account, you may still want the resulting changeset to look like they wrote it (and not you).
Git-p4 has helpfully imported the message from the Git commit as the content for this Perforce changeset, so all we have to do is save and quit, twice (once for each commit). The resulting shell output will look something like this:
$ git p4 submit
Perforce checkout for depot path //depot/www/live/ located at /Users/ben/john_bens-mbp_8487/john_bens-mbp_8487/depot/www/live/
Synchronizing p4 checkout...
... - file(s) up-to-date.
Applying dbac45b Update link
//depot/www/live/index.html#4 - opened for edit
Change 12143 created with 1 open file(s).
Submitting change 12143.
Locking 1 files ...
edit //depot/www/live/index.html#5
Change 12143 submitted.
Applying 905ec6a Change page title
//depot/www/live/index.html#5 - opened for edit
Change 12144 created with 1 open file(s).
Submitting change 12144.
Locking 1 files ...
edit //depot/www/live/index.html#6
Change 12144 submitted.
All commits applied!
Performing incremental import into refs/remotes/p4/master git branch
Depot paths: //depot/www/live/
Import destination: refs/remotes/p4/master
Importing revision 12144 (100%)
Rebasing the current branch onto remotes/p4/master
First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
$ git log --oneline --all --graph --decorate
* 775a46f (HEAD, p4/master, p4/HEAD, master) Change page title
* 05f1ade Update link
* 75cd059 Update copyright
* 70eaf78 Initial import of //depot/www/live/ from the state at revision #headThe result is as though we just did a git push, which is the closest analogy to what actually did happen.
Note that during this process every Git commit is turned into a Perforce changeset; if you want to squash them down into a single changeset, you can do that with an interactive rebase before running git p4 submit.
Also note that the SHA-1 hashes of all the commits that were submitted as changesets have changed; this is because git-p4 adds a line to the end of each commit it converts:
$ git log -1
commit 775a46f630d8b46535fc9983cf3ebe6b9aa53145
Author: John Doe <[email protected]>
Date: Sun Aug 31 10:31:44 2014 -0800
Change page title
[git-p4: depot-paths = "//depot/www/live/": change = 12144]What happens if you try to submit a merge commit? Let’s give it a try. Here’s the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into:
$ git log --oneline --all --graph --decorate
* 3be6fd8 (HEAD, master) Correct email address
* 1dcbf21 Merge remote-tracking branch 'p4/master'
|\
| * c4689fc (p4/master, p4/HEAD) Grammar fix
* | cbacd0a Table borders: yes please
* | b4959b6 Trademark
|/
* 775a46f Change page title
* 05f1ade Update link
* 75cd059 Update copyright
* 70eaf78 Initial import of //depot/www/live/ from the state at revision #headThe Git and Perforce history diverge after 775a46f.
The Git side has two commits, then a merge commit with the Perforce head, then another commit.
We’re going to try to submit these on top of a single changeset on the Perforce side.
Let’s see what would happen if we tried to submit now:
$ git p4 submit -n
Perforce checkout for depot path //depot/www/live/ located at /Users/ben/john_bens-mbp_8487/john_bens-mbp_8487/depot/www/live/
Would synchronize p4 checkout in /Users/ben/john_bens-mbp_8487/john_bens-mbp_8487/depot/www/live/
Would apply
b4959b6 Trademark
cbacd0a Table borders: yes please
3be6fd8 Correct email addressThe -n flag is short for --dry-run, which tries to report what would happen if the submit command were run for real.
In this case, it looks like we’d be creating three Perforce changesets, which correspond to the three non-merge commits that don’t yet exist on the Perforce server.
That sounds like exactly what we want, let’s see how it turns out:
$ git p4 submit
[…]
$ git log --oneline --all --graph --decorate
* dadbd89 (HEAD, p4/master, p4/HEAD, master) Correct email address
* 1b79a80 Table borders: yes please
* 0097235 Trademark
* c4689fc Grammar fix
* 775a46f Change page title
* 05f1ade Update link
* 75cd059 Update copyright
* 70eaf78 Initial import of //depot/www/live/ from the state at revision #headOur history became linear, just as though we had rebased before submitting (which is in fact exactly what happened). This means you can be free to create, work on, throw away, and merge branches on the Git side without fear that your history will somehow become incompatible with Perforce. If you can rebase it, you can contribute it to a Perforce server.
If your Perforce project has multiple branches, you’re not out of luck; git-p4 can handle that in a way that makes it feel like Git. Let’s say your Perforce depot is laid out like this:
//depot
└── project
├── main
└── devAnd let’s say you have a dev branch, which has a view spec that looks like this:
//depot/project/main/... //depot/project/dev/...Git-p4 can automatically detect that situation and do the right thing:
$ git p4 clone --detect-branches //depot/project@all
Importing from //depot/project@all into project
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/project/.git/
Importing revision 20 (50%)
Importing new branch project/dev
Resuming with change 20
Importing revision 22 (100%)
Updated branches: main dev
$ cd project; git log --oneline --all --graph --decorate
* eae77ae (HEAD, p4/master, p4/HEAD, master) main
| * 10d55fb (p4/project/dev) dev
| * a43cfae Populate //depot/project/main/... //depot/project/dev/....
|/
* 2b83451 Project initNote the “@all” specifier in the depot path; that tells git-p4 to clone not just the latest changeset for that subtree, but all changesets that have ever touched those paths. This is closer to Git’s concept of a clone, but if you’re working on a project with a long history, it could take a while.
The --detect-branches flag tells git-p4 to use Perforce’s branch specs to map the branches to Git refs.
If these mappings aren’t present on the Perforce server (which is a perfectly valid way to use Perforce), you can tell git-p4 what the branch mappings are, and you get the same result:
$ git init project
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/project/.git/
$ cd project
$ git config git-p4.branchList main:dev
$ git clone --detect-branches //depot/project@all .Setting the git-p4.branchList configuration variable to main:dev tells git-p4 that “main” and “dev” are both branches, and the second one is a child of the first one.
If we now git checkout -b dev p4/project/dev and make some commits, git-p4 is smart enough to target the right branch when we do git p4 submit.
Unfortunately, git-p4 can’t mix shallow clones and multiple branches; if you have a huge project and want to work on more than one branch, you’ll have to git p4 clone once for each branch you want to submit to.
For creating or integrating branches, you’ll have to use a Perforce client. Git-p4 can only sync and submit to existing branches, and it can only do it one linear changeset at a time. If you merge two branches in Git and try to submit the new changeset, all that will be recorded is a bunch of file changes; the metadata about which branches are involved in the integration will be lost.
Git-p4 makes it possible to use a Git workflow with a Perforce server, and it’s pretty good at it. However, it’s important to remember that Perforce is in charge of the source, and you’re only using Git to work locally. Just be really careful about sharing Git commits; if you have a remote that other people use, don’t push any commits that haven’t already been submitted to the Perforce server.
If you want to freely mix the use of Perforce and Git as clients for source control, and you can convince the server administrator to install it, Git Fusion makes using Git a first-class version-control client for a Perforce server.