[p4] Emulate ClearCase

[Dave Lewis]

On 9/7/06, daaku6-66 at yahoo.com <daaku6-66 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> But basically, what I'm looking for is this: Be able to share a workspace between multiple users, and yet let them check-out & check-in files as themselves.

This is do-able, but users have to be well grounded in the limitations/rules
necessary to do it right.

In our case here, we have a "build" account, but when I'm logged in as build
I set my p4user to be "dlewis". Then whenever I check things in, it is done
as perforce user dlewis. There are a number of kinks though. p4 opened
lists all files open on the client, not just the ones I opened as user dlewis.
I can edit any files that are open for edit on the client, but when I submit,
only files that I opened as dlewis will be in the list of files to be submitted.
Sync operations could get confusing if you want to work with anything
other than the head revision, other users could stomp on your sync state
and you might not know that had happened.

The usual advice is that you shouldn't share a client between users. It is
possible, but there will be gotcha's that will need to be anticipated and
ironed out in some way or another.

dave