[p4] P4 Submit

[Paul Cody]

> 
>          The things you asked for are things that you can write
>          front-end wrappers for and, as someone pointed out
>          on this list, someone already has. It's called "c4".
> 
>          However, the things you're asking for are also things
>          that aren't Perforce primitives because they either
>          have a high cost (not to develop or implement, but
>          to the user) or they're just stupid.
> 
>          There, I said it. You REALLY want people to check
>          out all files just because they're too lazy to write an
>          editor macro to run "p4 edit" when they want to modify
>          a file?  You'd trade away the ability to know who is
>          CURRENTLY working on something in exchange for
>          a lazy developer mindset?
>
>          I turn red when people tell me to "RTFM" because I
>          think it's patronizing.
> 
>          But have *you* cracked the FM enough to know
>          what Perforce can do and cannot do?  Its model
>          isn't CVS (and the things you're asking for aren't
>          part of the standard CVS model either) and if you
>          want CVS, get it.
>

Yes I can say that I have read the manuals, the technical notes, and several
good online references at least several times (posted below for the benefit
of future people combing perforce-user archives (looks like one of them is
yours)).  I've written a couple of internal documents to help people
understand the concepts, how to get setup, and I've gone cube to cube to
personally help each developer get working.  I've only been using the system
for less than a month now, and we have only 53 changespecs ("p4 changes").
We haven't even actually bought it yet (eval license).  Anyhow, people here
think I'm a perforce crusader (in reality just a source control crusader).
So I'm confident that if you had me in a locked room and quizzed me on
perforce concepts, I believe I could survive without too much embarrasment.

And maybe I'm flying off the handle about p4 edit, I just think that the
features it provides could be implemented without involving the user (or at
least very minimal involement).  And I'm used to CVS.
 
>          You'll miss out on a number of incredibly helpful
>          things. The branching model in Perforce is excellent,
>          mining data to give reports to QA for handoffs is
>          straight-forward, and doing an incremental update
>          of a workspace is blindingly fast. You won't find
>          a system that does NT *and* Unix work as seamlessly,
>          and the Perforce client program ("p4") is available
>          on just about any platform with a C compiler and
>          a TCP/IP library. Yes, even VMS. Even IBM S/390.
> 
>          You're encountering a lot of hostility from this
>          mailing list because you're asking why developers
>          will need to learn new keystrokes for a new tool.
>          Would they tell a customer, who's switching away
>          from a competitor's product, that their product
>          can be used with no changes in procedure?
> 
>          If so, how do you convince the customer to
>          buy your product that's identical in behavior
>          to the competitor that they're switching away from?

I recognize that product differentiation is important to Perforce as a
company, and I think that they support features that are worth paying for.
I just think that they could be better.

Paul

http://www.opentelecom.org/software/quickstart.html
http://public.perforce.com/public/perforce/faq/admin.html
http://developer.arsdigita.com/acs-java/resources/perforce/cvs-perforce-tran
sition.html

>          -Jeff Bowles
> 
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