[p4] Deployment files in Perforce or Maven?

[vegard.setrenes@telenor.com]

Hi,

In my department we use Perforce on all Java development, and we have been following the "best practice" of not storing anything in the depot, other than what's necessary to do a build. In other words, we don't check in binary archive files like EARs and JARs.

The source code for one of our systems was imported from cvs one year ago. We have some deployment scripts that depend on retrieving EARs and JARs from dedicated deployment directories in the same old cvs. These scripts copy the deployment files to multiple test or production servers.

To be able to finally get rid of the cvs base, we are looking for the best way of keeping the deployment files. Should we use Perforce or a web based Maven repository?

It is clear that we do not need all historic revisions of the files. We are just looking for a good way to make them available for the automated deployment scripts. So I guess we could specify the +S modifier for a designated part of the Perforce depot. But ideally there should be a way to keep just the N last revisions, making it possible for the deployment scripts to do rollbacks. Is this possible without using the obliterate command?

How do you organize your deployment files in your organization?

Thanks,

- Vegard