Book Image

Learning Perforce SCM

By : Neal Ralph Firth, Robert Cowham
Book Image

Learning Perforce SCM

By: Neal Ralph Firth, Robert Cowham

Overview of this book

<p>Learning Perforce SCM is a pragmatic how-to guide, explaining the key concepts and usage of Perforce. Based on the authors' experiences training thousands of users around the globe, it explains those key concepts in a clear, incremental manner, combining sound theory with the pragmatic application of principles.<br /><br />Learning Perforce SCM provides practical knowledge which will transform you into confident and competent Perforce users in your day-to-day operations.<br /><br />You'll start by learning how to use Perforce to track your day-to-day coding activities. Once a solid foundation is established you'll learn how to apply the data mining features to evaluate current and past activities. Then you'll learn how to configure Perforce so that it adapts to support your specific development needs. All the while you'll be learning how to deal with conflicts and use the tool to communicate with other team members. Finally, you'll learn about using branches and streams to provide seamless support for concurrent development. Along the way, pragmatic hints and tips will help you avoid issues and identify areas for further personal exploration.</p> <p><em>"It's wonderful to see a new book about Perforce, especially one written by Robert Cowham and Neal Firth. No one can teach Perforce better than these seasoned subject matter experts"</em><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; -&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <em>Laura Wingerd, author of Practical Perforce.</em></p>
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Learning Perforce SCM
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating useful changelists


As we will see throughout this book, changelists are the primary mechanism for change tracking within Perforce. We submit our changes to the repository changelist by changelist, not file by file.

In and of themselves, the myriad change details automatically tracked by Perforce are just details. It is up to you to give purpose to these details. You are the one that makes the difference between changelists that are useful and changelists that are just collections of details. If you think changelists are overhead that make you less efficient, that might be a sign that your changelists aren't as useful as they could be!

The good news is that useful changelists are easy to create. You just need to follow some straightforward best practices.

Associating files with a changelist

The user has total control over the choice of file(s) to submit with a changelist. Following the simple best practice of creating changelists of related files will reap you and your team large rewards...