Perforce

Perforce is a software for managing versions of files and directories.

Architecture

Perforce supports copy -modify -merge concept. However, working with the lock- modify-write approach is also possible. In addition to the usual management of files that are happening locally in defined workspaces, Perforce still contains the following object types: labels (to highlight certain revision levels of the versioned files ), Branch - Views ( definitions of branch contexts ), jobs (similar to the tickets of a bug tracker system ).

Perforce is implemented as a client-server architecture. The server application manages a database containing the metadata about the versioned files, including editing comments, version numbers, and the relations between the versions. The files themselves are stored separately as RCS deltas in the file system of the server. The server is available for various operating systems.

The client that is available for various operating systems, including GNU / Linux, Windows and Mac OS X communicates with the server via TCP / IP. (P4 called ) to command line based client are different GUI variants that make the normal user tasks such as check out, check and compare versions very easy. In addition, interfaces exist for scripting languages ​​such as Perl or Ruby.

Perforce versioned each file individually, but managed so-called Change Channels, get the global sequence number for the repository. With each check-in action is a Change List, consisting of any number of individual actions on files ( for example, change, add, delete) committed. The version history of a folder in the repository shows these global change playlists, so any time the entire folder structure can be restored at any given time.

Licensing

From January 2012, a version of the Perforce server is for a maximum of twenty user for free ( with a maximum of twenty working copies ) - previously was the limit for two users. Alternatively, is a Perforce server with unlimited users, but limited to use freely to 1000 files. Also available for free is Perforce for open source projects, school projects and for testing purposes. Commercial use is otherwise chargeable. All clients are freely available and can be installed on as many systems.

Dissemination

In January 2010 5.000 organizations had acquired licenses for more than 320,000 users.