[p4] graphical representation of branches?

[Weintraub, David]

Branch specs don't do any good because you cannot trust that 1). A
branch was actually created using a branch specification. 2). That a
branch specification was even used to create the branch specified, and
especially 3). That the branch specification even matches the way files
were actually branched.

The other problem with Perforce is that Perforce doesn't really
understand the concept of directories. Sure, files are on directories,
but all Perforce actions takes place on files and not directories. In
theory, //depot/MAIN/foo.c could have been branched to
//depot/REL1/foo.c, but //depot/MAIN/bar.c was branched to
//depot/REL2/bar.c -- or even //depot/REL2/foo.c. You can't tell except
by looking at each and every file and on each and every branch.

If you followed Laura Wingerd's recommendation that branch names are all
uppercase, you could go through your Perforce depot looking for all
directories that are completely uppercase. Some users do not flatten
their branching structure, so they're depot looks something like this:

//depot/Acme/MAIN/...
//depot/Acme/MAIN/REL1/...
//depot/Acme/MAIN/REL1/REL1.1/...
//depot/Acme/MAIN/REL2/...

Instead of the more standard:

//depot/Acme/MAIN/...
//depot/Acme/REL1/...
//depot/Acme/REL1.1/...
//depot/Acme/REL2/...

That way, the branch directory names reflect the branching structure.
This makes something you want to do a lot easier. Of course, it also
means that the Perforce protection table gets a bit more complex (How do
you give a user permission to work the directories and files off of
branch //depot/Acme/MAIN/..., but not on files and directories that are
on a branch that branched off of //depot/Acme/MAIN/...?). And, it makes
assumptions of where to find branch names much harder. (In the second
layout, branch names are all on the third directory on the depot tree.
In the first layout, they could be anywhere on the depot tree).

The only real way to do this is to run the "p4 -ztag integrated" command
and parse away. Each entry gives you a "toFile" and a "fromFile".
Compare these, and remove the end parts of the two that match. This will
give you the branching directory names. Store these in the form of
"fromDirectory -> toDirectory" pairs and throw away duplicate pairings.

Once you've parsed all of the file entries, you're left with a few dozen
branch pairings. Now it's an easy step from taking these individual
branching pairs to constructing the actual branching tree structure they
represent. (That is, if you weren't like me and actually paid attention
in your data structures class.) A simple task really. No more difficult
than taking individual snippets of DNA and reconstructing an entire
genome.

Sorry, Unfortunately, I really cannot think of an easier way of doing
this. Like all version control systems, Perforce really doesn't
understand what branches really mean. All version control systems create
branches off of individual files or directories.

Branches don't branch off of files! Branches branch off of other
branches! Maybe one day, some version control system will understand
this concept.

-----Original Message-----
From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
[mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of Jay Glanville
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 8:05 AM
To: Perforce Users Mailing List
Subject: [p4] graphical representation of branches?

Hello all you fellow P4'ers

I want to create a graphical representation of all the branches that a
product of ours has gone through.  I know that P4 doesn't provide this
functionality natively, so I was wondering if anyone in the P4 community
has developed such a tool.  Before somebody says, "don't forget the
'Revision Graph ...' functionality in P4V", yes, that's great, but it's
just for a specific file, not for branches.

I was thinking that the branch specifications would be a good data
source for this information (from, to, date, reason, name, etc).

So, has anyone already developed such a tool?  If not and I need to
write such a tool, is branch specifications the appropriate data source?

Thanks

JDG

---
Jay Dickon Glanville

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