Quick Perforce VPN Cleaning

Question

I have to regularly perform clean Perforce synchronization with new hardware / virtual machines via VPN. This may take several hours because the project is large enough. Is there a way that I can simply copy the updated tree from an existing client and tell Perforce to use this tree?

Answer 1

Perforce Proxy is the right way, but if you really want it, there is a way to do what you requested through the sync command using the -k switch:

The -k flag bypasses the Update client file. It can be used for the server believes that the client workspace already has a file. Usually this flag is used to fix the Perforce server, when it is mistaken that the files are on the client, using this option can confuse the server if you are incorrect about the contents of the client.

  p4 sync -k // depot / someProject / ... 

You can also use flush , which is a synonym for sync -k :

  p4 flush // depot / someProject / ... 

Just be careful. Remember these last words: "... using this option can confuse the server if you are mistaken about the contents of the client."

Answer 2

Perforce Proxy is almost certainly suitable, assuming that you can dedicate a local machine to this purpose.

A useful tip for a proxy server is to update it during the night by simply creating a dummy client (possibly on a proxy machine) and letting go of the night task for synchronization - normal synchronization will do, it is not necessary to be clean. This ensures that any big changes that people have tested will not necessarily cause a massive lag the first time they use local synchronization.

Please note that you need to connect to the VPN connection between the proxy server and the server - the proxy server still needs to talk to the server to determine if it has the correct caching version. Thus, the proxy requires a low latency link to the server, but at least you do not need to wait for the actual file transfer.

Another alternative that you can try is to use the compression option in your client specifications (workspaces). This tells the server to compress each file before sending it, and your p4 client will be automatically unpacked. The trade-off here is the processor time on both the server and the client. However, if you want to synchronize several local clients, I think that a proxy server will ultimately be the best solution.

Answer 3

No, but you don’t need it: why do you need pure persistent synchronization? What happened to normal sync? If you need to clean a tree, then why not work with a copy of the tree?

One alternative may be to run p4proxy at your end of the VPN connection, then immutable files should not be transferred through the VPN.

If you only need to export, then you do not need to update it or send changes from it, then you can simply copy the existing order and never use perforce against this tree. But I still don’t know the convincing perforce server that you have a check without p4 actually checking the files.