[p4] Is Sync -f trouble?

[Jeff Grills]

There are times to use "p4 sync -f", otherwise it wouldn't be an available
option.  However, I'd agree with support that using that in an automated
script to get a clean build is a mistake and can cause significant
performance issues with your server.  All you really need to do is to verify
that your files are identical to the server's copy and that no extra files
exist.  First sync to head, and then use "p4 diff -sl //..." to compare the
files on your client with the server.  p4 will read the files on the client
and compute their md5 signatures and compare them with the server's md5
signature, which is server stored in the metadata so the server doesn't even
have to read its copy of the file.  Very little work is done by the server
and very little data is transferred over the wire, so it's hard to get much
better than this.  If any files are different, then you can use a "p4 sync
-f" to bring those specific files back into sync.  The only remaining thing
to do is to remove all the files that the server didn't tell you about.  If
your client mapping is relatively obvious, you can probably post-process the
diff's output into the list of files that should exist, and then remove any
others.

"p4 integrate" is usually the command that I see hang servers up for a
while, although that's been getting better in recent versions of p4.

j

-----Original Message-----
From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
[mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of Venters, Cheryl
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 10:49 PM
To: perforce-user at perforce.com
Subject: [p4] Is Sync -f trouble?


We're still having terrible problems with P4 performance. When I talked to
Perforce today, the person I talked to told me we should never be running p4
sync -f. All of our automated scripts run the sequence sync #none, delete
the build directory, sync -f. That has been our policy for a clean build.
Does anybody have input on this? And, are there p4 commands that have a
greater potential for hanging the server? 

 

Thanks.

Cheryl

 

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