[p4] How do YOU identify the code set for a release?

[Lloyd Cha]

Once upon a time (like on Jan 05, 2008), frank at compagner.com wrote:
> IW> You can "fake it" to make what you're used to happen by playing
> IW> games with your client mapping or with symbolic links if you're
> IW> using a Unix system, but it's not as safe and convenient as
> IW> one directory per branch.
> 
> It would be great if their was a reliable and cheap way of changing
> branches in-place on the client, where only the files that are
> actually different between the branches are downloaded. This would
> also help a lot in reducing build times after switching branches. A
> full build takes several hours, but if the local files that do not
> differ between the branches remain untouched only a partial build will
> be necessary.

For better or worse, we use a home-grown script that generates a
"release file list" which defines a list of files and versions that
define a particular release.  This release file is then also checked
into our Perforce repository.  When users want to get a particular
"release", they run the script which first retrieves the desired
release file list from the depot.  It then parses this file and syncs
to the files and versions specified.

This does allow our users to update to new releases without affecting
files that aren't changing.  One disadvantage is that the parsing of
the release file list and the subsequent p4 sync command can get slow
if the list of files gets large.

-L