[p4] Perfarce [sic] experiences

[Matt Janulewicz]

A few comments inline. I've used this new offline functionality extensively for the past month or so.

Snip snip.

> > There's still the limit of actually _knowing_ that you'll be offline
> > beforehand though. Is there a possibility to force the
> > offline mode without
> > having a server connection? I realize the potential problems
> > with this, but
> > under certain circumstances and for certain people it might be a
> > "lifesaver".
> 
> Theoretically possible - given above info, but I suspect a hobby
> project to
> get it reliable...

Correct, not built in. The contents of your offline workspace are dependent on what you have synced. What's more, the offline client does not track the actual revisions of what you have, nor the history. You basically end up with the same content with every file showing revision #1. No branch history. No labels. I think that it is really designed to be a more comfortable 'reconcile offline work', in the event you know you are going to be working offline. Personally, it feels more natural to me.

> > > Work normally. (Perforce operations are tracked by the local server
> > > so they can be reconciled when you resume working online. Do not
> > > change file permissions manually.)
> >
> > Does offline work support branching /integrating / renaming / moving?
> 
> Don't see why not - it's a normal server - haven't tested though.

It doesn't. See above. My guess is that Perforce is trying to minimize the overhead/time of going offline, so you basically get the #head of all your synced offline files in a local database to do with what you wish. When you go offline your branch, label, client and job icons are all grayed out.

> > > To bring your workspace online: choose Connection > Bring Workspace
> > > Online. To minimize conflicts that can occur when you resume
> working
> > > online and submit files that others have changed, create a personal
> > > development branch (often called a sandbox) to isolate your
> changes.
> >
> > Would be nice if this was given as an option when going offline.
> 
> Indeed.

You end up having to reconcile conflicts in any case, so I'm not sure what this saves you unless you already work on a private branch when you're online.

> > > After you bring your workspace online, P4V prompts you to
> > submit your
> > > offline work. You can autosubmit, which submits a single changelist
> > > containing all your work, or review your offline work. Reviewing
> > > offline work enables you to organize your changes into multiple
> > > changelists, grouping related changes to ensure that you obtain a
> > > meaningful file history that best reflects your work.
> >
> > Is there no way to "simply" replicate the local changelists
> > submitted when
> > going online again, perhaps with a review option? Or is this what the
> > paragraph says, just somewhat inexplicitly?
> 
> Well it replays them all in sequence automatically - no reviews - in my
> testing.

In the latest 2009.2 (236331) P4V you have a choice: Review, which combines all your changes into one pending changlist where you can review them, or Auto-Submit, which will submit all your offline changes in sequence.

> > > IMPORTANT: To ensure data integrity, you must take the workspace
> > > offline while you still have access to the server. If you
> > do not have
> > > network access to the server, do not take your workspace offline.
> >
> > As above - is this more like "here be dragons" or is it "you
> > can't do this"?
> 
> Try it :)

When you go offline there is data written to the database. I'm not sure what all of it is but at least one thing that is written is the state of the workspace (being offline.)


-Matt