[p4] Drawing branch-diagrams

[Jeff A. Bowles]

I have had good luck with the following strategy:

   1. Use "p4 integrated" to get the list of all-existing parent-child
   relationships, from-file and to-file.
   2. Massage that output to get rid of common endings: //depot/main/x/y/z.c
    and //depot/release1/x/y/z.c should whittle down to "//depot/main" ->
   "//depot/release1".
   3. Eliminate the duplicate in these lists, because a branch of 1000 files
   will have 1000 entries that look like "//depot/main" -> "//depot/release1".
   4. Download Graphviz, which is free and runs on your platform.  Make a
   simple test case, and learn enough about the basic ASCII input to be able to
   put the envelop information around it.
   5. Make a Graphviz input from the data in #3.
   6. Run Graphviz. It won't take long.
   7. Note the weird times that people went off-the-road to integrate in
   weird ways.  (I often discard entries in step #3 that have less than 10-15
   duplications because they're on-off branches or renames or ...)

It's easy, can be automated (and audited), and it is free. ( And pretty. )

  -Jeff Bowles


On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 7:51 AM, Rick Macdonald <rickmacd at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Automatically drawing something that doesn't exist sounds tough!
>
> I've never used or even seen a "smart whiteboard", but it seems it would
> be an easy way to draw and update your diagrams. I found a 48" diagonal
> SmartBoard for US$669 by surfing the web for a few minutes.
>
> http://www.fsdb.k12.fl.us/rmc/tutorials/whiteboards.html
> http://www.shopwels.net/magento/catalog/category/view/mode/list/id/41/
>
> Rick
>
> Felix Drueke wrote:
> > Hi Shawn,
> >
> > thanks for the hint.
> >
> > Yes - I know the revision-graph and it's a help, but what we want to do
> > is more like planning future branches and integrations.
> > The revision graph can only show the history.
> >
> > Felix
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com wrote, on 24/10/08 02:44 PM:
> >
> >> P4V's revision graph will help a lot!
> >>
> >>
> >> -Shawn Jamison>
> >> Ciena Corp.
> >> Perforce Admin
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
> >> [mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of Felix Drueke
> >> Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 8:33 AM
> >> To: perforce-user at perforce.com
> >> Subject: [p4] Drawing branch-diagrams
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> we have a whole jungle branches for the development of new features of
> >> our various software-products.
> >> Each of these branches has a purpose and a planned end-date (which often
> >> changes) and has a designated target-branch (usually a so-called
> >> main-line) to that its changes will be integrated.
> >>
> >> In order to bring a bit light into the jungle I started to draw diagrams
> >> which show what branches exist, what integrations have to be performed
> >> (from where to
> >> where) and what the planned end-dates for each branch are.
> >> I'm doing that with MS-Visio which hurts, because I spent more and more
> >> time updating the diagrams and drawing new lines (for branches or
> >> integrations between the branches).
> >>
> >> Does anyone do something similar? What tool(s) can you recommend?
> >>
> >> Thanks for any hints,
> >> Felix
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> perforce-user mailing list  -  perforce-user at perforce.com
> >> http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> perforce-user mailing list  -  perforce-user at perforce.com
> >> http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
> >>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > perforce-user mailing list  -  perforce-user at perforce.com
> > http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> perforce-user mailing list  -  perforce-user at perforce.com
> http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
>



-- 
---
Jeff Bowles - jeff.a.bowles at gmail.com