June 2021

# Tips for Using Perforce

Sun
27
Jun 2021

Version Control Systems are tools that every programmer should use. Among them, Git is probably the most popular one. Some companies use Perforce instead. Whether it is better or worse is hard to tell, but it has its advantages that make it indispensable in some types of projects, like game development. Perforce handles large binary files very well. Even if the files have tens or a hundred of gigabytes, it still works fine. I talk about the size of one local copy here, not the entire repository on the server.

From user’s perspective, Perforce differs greatly from Git or SVN. Not only commands are named differently (e.g. there is “Submit” instead of “Commit”), but the whole concept of “changelists” is something that needs to be well understood to be used efficiently. While working with Perforce for many years in different companies and projects, I learned some good practices that I would like to share here. Writing them down was difficult as they seem obvious to me, but hopefully some of them are not obvious to you so you will learn something new.

1. Paste paths to address bar

Let’s start with a simple one. Perforce window has a text box on the top that resembles address bar in web browsers. It shows the path of the currently selected file or directory in Depot or Workspace tab. It can also accept input.

When you work on some file in another tool and you want to jump quickly to it in Perforce, e.g. to check it out, just copy the full path of the file to system clipboard and paste it in this “address bar”. Selection in Workspace tab will switch to it immediately.

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