Triggers (was: Re: Defect trackers and Perforce)

[Brad_Appleton-GBDA001 at email.mot.comBrad_Appleton-GBDA001]

Herb Maeder writes:
> Perhaps I should rephrase the question a little bit...  Where can I find
> out more about Perforce's implementation of triggers in p4?

As I mentioned earlier, any specifics about how p4 intends to do
triggers will have to come from someone at perforce.

> But it seems to me, that even with a very robust implementation, the
> trigger mechanism will always have some inherent limitations.

Of course, you are constrained by WHERE the sequence points are
for you to plug in the triggers. You need them for the "right"
commands in the "right" places for your environment. While there
is very little limitation upon what a trigger can do, there is
an implicit constraint upon "where" and "when". As with any
pluggable framework, it is the framework (or the tool) that drives
the flow of control (from the framework's perspective its a matter of
"don't call us - we'll call you").

> So, from the sounds of it, details on the perforce implementation are not
> known yet.  So planning to implementing stuff with triggers is still a
> little premature at this point.  Wrapper scripts to add/replace p4
> commands are probably still the way to go for now, although in the future
> perhaps some things may be done more effectively with trigger.  Does this
> sound about right?

Yes - and I apologize if I ever gave even the faintest impression to the
contrary. This whole thread started because I was stating my desire for
P4 to have triggers, not describing any existing p4 features.

Of course there is nothing stopping you from building triggers into your
own p4 wrappers to allow your shop to customize p4 behavior on a group by
group, project by project, or even person by person basis. That would
be one way for you to make your own set-up a teeny bit less dependent
on a particular version control tool underneath it.

Cheers!
- -- 
Brad Appleton <bradapp at enteract.com> | http://www.enteract.com/~bradapp/
 "And miles to go before I sleep."   |  3700+ WWW links on CS & Sw-Eng