[p4] P4V vs. P4WIN

[David Weintraub]

On 4/15/07, Sheizaf, Yariv <yariv.sheizaf at sap.com> wrote:
> P4WIN is intuitive, P4V is NOT.

Not being a native Windows user (but fairly use to applications that
use the QT Widgets set), I found p4win to be non-intuitive and P4V to
be much easier to use.

> P4Win is almost 100% stabilized and always with very HIGH performance,
> while P4V is not.

Have you used P4V recently? I have had no stability problems with P4V.
It works like a champ.

> Unix oriented users install P4win on their PCs, use the AltRoot option
> and work from P4win because P4V UI is problematic.

Explain how I install P4win on my Linux box again? The biggest
advantage to P4V is that it works on *all* platforms while p4win only
works on Windows. Using P4V means that I use Perforce the same way
whether I am on my Linux box or on my Windows box.

P4V works on all platforms, and it would be the tool I'd rather
everyone use. It makes it one platform I have to support, and it makes
it easy for a developer to switch from Linux to Windows to Mac to
Solaris.

However, my job is not to lay down doctrine, but to help people do
their job. My main concern is knowing what features and bug fixes are
going into each and every release, and in order to do that, it is
better if developers have tools they find easy to use.

Therefore, when a developer tells me that they don't like P4V, I'll
tell them to try P4win. But, they must understand that support I give
on P4win is not as robust as the support I give on P4V. If a developer
asks me how to do something in P4V, I can tell them the menu, dialog
box, and which button to push. I cannot do that on P4win . All
documentation I've drawn up is oriented towards the "p4" command line
and P4V. If you want to use P4win, you have to figure it out on your
own.

As to the future of P4win... When I first got Perforce, support told
me that P4win is on legacy support, and only bug fixes would be added
to P4win. All new features work will go into P4V. We can see this with
the lack of the revision graph and administrative functionality with
P4win. Perforce also removed P4win from the standard Windows Perforce
installation. If you want to use P4win, you have to install it
separately. This shows the direction Perforce wants to head in the
future.

P4win won't be going away anytime soon. Too many people use it and
prefer it to P4V. Because of its Windows orientation, it does make a
better presentation when comparing it to other SCM systems. (I
personally choose an SCM system on its features, and not how pretty
their GUI is, but apparently I am in the minority.)

Then, again I insist that developers learn the grueling work on how to
use Perforce via the command line and that does give P4V a leg up. I
guess I am old fashion in this respect, but I somehow expect that
developers have the technical expertise to understand the tools they
are using. Not everything is covered in the GUI. You cannot do
convergent branch merging via either GUI as they stand. And even once
you setup the GUI to do convergent branch merging, you still need to
understand the basic steps.

The choice between P4V vs. p4win is a personal preference. I will
freely admit that most Windows users find p4win "more intuitive"
because it behaves like a typical Windows program. However, I most
users don't find P4V a terribly bitter pill to swallow. Maybe because
of the way we do training and insist that developers understand what
Perforce is doing and how to run Perforce from the command line.

My personal preference is using Perforce from the command line except
when a GUI tool (like the merge process or revision graph) really adds
some good value.

--
David Weintraub
qazwart at gmail.com