[p4] P4V vs. P4WIN

[Shawn Hladky]

I'm surprised so many people think P4Win is more intuitive than P4V.  My
experience is the opposite.  In P4V, you have the "Files" tab, the address
bar, and the ability to show only folders in the tree.  All of those make
P4V behave more like windows explorer than P4Win.  The terms "Get Latest",
and "Check Out" are much more intuitive than "Sync to Head", and "Open for
Edit" (although I hate that it's different from all the other clients).  The
resolve file dialog is also much more intuitive than P4Win for new users
(although confusing if you already know Perforce's bizarre terminology).  We
switched our training docs for new employees and have all of them learning
P4V now.  Most of our existing users use P4Win, and even though the new
people see their peers using P4Win, they don't switch from P4V after the
training.

Frankly, I don't think the average user would notice any functional between
P4Win and P4V.  Sync, Edit, Submit, diff, file history, etc. all work
basically the same in both GUI's.  It's really only the power users that
notice all the small features that are in one and not the other. Personally
I use P4V (60%), p4 (25%), p4api (10%) and p4win (5%)... that's the
combination that's most productive for me.  Honestly, it was painful to
transition from P4Win to P4V... I had to FORCE myself to use it for about 2
weeks.  But once I got over some of the initial learning curve (and wrote a
couple custom tools), I found I was more productive in P4V than P4Win.

Here's a list my favorite P4V features (not in P4Win):
History Tab
Address Bar
Find File Tab
Context Menus in Revision Graph & Timelapse View
Drop-down to switch to frequently used client specs
Details Pane (particularly in Submitted Changelists and History Tab)
Workspace Tab
Folder Diff

As for performance/reliability, P4V gets better every release.  A few
releases back, and P4V would crash every week or so for me (and I still
preferred it to P4Win).  I don't think I've ever had 2007.1 crash... even in
the beta.  In many cases, P4V will always be slower than P4Win.  That's
because P4V is displaying more information than P4Win... a fair trade-off in
my book.

There's only one area that I think p4win is much better in than p4v (major
usecase... there are several little things)... managing pending
changelists.  P4V is missing 'sort by resolve status' (or sort by anything
for that matter), 'move to another changelist' context menu (drag-and-drop
is no good w/ large number of files), and 'save to numbered changelist'.
Also, it lists all jobs in the jobview under the default changelist... which
means a lot more scrolling if you've got a lot of jobs.  None of those are a
big deal w/ small numbers of files, but when I get med-large numbers
(200-2000), that's when I switch to P4Win.  Anything bigger and I go to the
cmd line anyway.

On 4/16/07, Sheizaf, Yariv <yariv.sheizaf at sap.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Yariv Sheizaf
> SAP - SBS Cyprus Engineering Services TL
> Phone  +972-9-7779643
> Mobile  +972-54-2277586
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Weintraub [mailto: qazwart at gmail.com]
> Sent: ב, אפריל 16, 2007 2:28
> To: Sheizaf, Yariv
> Cc: perforce-user at perforce.com
> Subject: Re: [p4] P4V vs. P4WIN
>
> But what you were saying was for Unix users to use P4win. Yes, if you
> can find a shared workspace between a Windows and Unix/Linux machine,
> you could use the "AltRoot" (and remove the Host field) in order to
> share a workspace between a Windows box and a Unix box. I do that
> right now with the Cygwin version of "p4" on my Windows machine.
>
> >> Pure Linux (or Unix or Mac) users working with P4V. Typically, People
> who have a mixed environment (and have a good knowledge of both interfaces)
> works with P4WIN (I must say, it was in objection to my recommendation to
> use P4V for Unix/Linux clients - but they chose the complex way of
> p4win/altroot).
>
> However, what it sounds like you're saying is that if I have to do
> something in Perforce and I am on my Linux box, I should leave my
> Linux box, go back to my Windows box in order to use P4win and not
> P4V, do whatever I needed to do, then go back to my Linux box to do
> whatever I was doing in the first place.
>
> >> As I wrote above - no. 100% Unix users should use P4V.
>
> I can understand a Window only environment and standardizing on P4win,
> but if you have a mixed environment, P4V may be the better choice
> since it works the same on all platforms.
>
> Most of the problems P4win people are having with P4V has to do with a
> different interface and the different way you would use that
> interface. When P4V first came out, there was a lot of short comings
> with it, but over time, it has become more stable. more powerful, and
> more useful. In my situation, where I work on both Windows and
> non-Windows system, I am better off using P4V which gives me a single
> interface on all the various systems I may use.
>
> >> I agree that P4V stability and performance is now much better that 4 or
> 5 releases ago (even not similar to P4WIN). And, again, for pure Unix
> environment it is the straight direction to use it.
>
> The main problem is the intuitivity, and this factor can be a real mine
> when try to sell (or "internal corporate sell") of the Perforce product,
> specially to users who are Windows-dedicated or people who used competitor
> nice CM tools GUIs.
>
> On 4/15/07, Sheizaf, Yariv <yariv.sheizaf at sap.com> wrote:
> > Hi David,
> >
> > Answer your technical question:
> >
> > Yariv:
> > > Unix oriented users install P4win on their PCs, use the AltRoot option
>
> > > and work from P4win because P4V UI is problematic.
> >
> > David:
> > 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.
> >
> > >> If your Perforce client work space is located on a filer (Network
> > Appliance or alike), or using Samba, you can see your client files in
> > both Linux and Windows, and use P4win (or P4v) from Windows using
> > AltRoot field in your client spec setting.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Yariv Sheizaf
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> --
> David Weintraub
> qazwart at gmail.com
>
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