[p4] Perforce Sync does not always work...

[Dave Lewis]

  > 
  > I am continually frustrated by the fact that "p4 sync //depot/tree/dir/..."
  > does not always sync all the changed files.  In order to be sure that I will
  > be syncing all the changed files I am very often forced to add the "-f"
  > option to the sync and do an entire bring over to be sure that I have gotten
  > all the changes.

I have never encountered a case where p4 sync did not work... with some exceptions,
which make sense.

You need to remember that

1) p4 never looks at the client files to determine if they need to be synced. It
   knows if files have changed on the server, and the server has a record of the
   last files that were put on the client.  It is important to remember this
   sort of "remote control" model.

   because of this, if you do local operations, such as rm, or whatever, perforce
   will not know that those files need to be replaced.  Therefor, only use
   perforce commands to remove files, etc.

2) if a file is open for edit, perforce will not overwrite it.

3) if noclobber is set, and a file is writable, perforce will not overwrite it.
   (I think)

There are probably a few other exceptions.  Best thing is to take one example
of a file that is not getting synced and determine why it is not.

Also, I do not know what your client mappings are like, but I almost never use depot
syntax to do a sync.  When I'm in the client, a simple "p4 sync" will bring it
up to date.

If you're using the gui, make sure its release number and the server's match. I have
sometimes seen some problems when they do not.

dave