Five Real-World Strategies for Perforce Streams

Before you deploy Perforce Streams in your organization, you should have a plan in place. Get advice and hear the five strategies for using Streams and how to handle integration exceptions gracefully.

1. Erik van Nooijen Technical Lead at TomTom Five Real-World Strategies for Perforce Streams

2. Erik van Nooijen Technical Lead TomTom International B.V. 10 years as contractor (senior) developer 5 years in TomTom - Netherlands 3 years senior developer 2 years technical lead

3. TomTom background information

4. TomTom total Perforce installation size 780 Gb database 3.2 TB versioned files #proxies 10 #replicas 4 #users ~700 #workspaces ~19000 #changes ~1.000.000 Main server 32 core 284 Gb ram 4* Fusion IO ( ssd ) 8.6 Tb TomTom Perforce installation numbers Streamed depot size 52 Gb #streams 360 #mainlines 1 #release streams 20 #users ~150 #changes ~80000

5. Educate your user base on streams

6. Educate user base Parent / child stream relationship p redefined integration flows Merge-down / copy-up r esolve-on-child paradigm Stream specification vs branch mapping Moving workspace Naming conventions Renaming a stream does not rename the underlying branch Deleting streams

7. Cherry-picking integrations

8. Integrate 1 (or few) specific changelists up, without doing a full copy-up Examples: Quick propagation of a bug fix Selective moving finished work to prep stream Cherry-picking integrations

9. Cross stream integrations

10. Integrations that are not following pre-defined flow Using ‘ p4 integrate //source/…@11,11 // dest /… ’ Example: integrate specific changelist into existing release. Most often happens for bug fixes. Xstream integration: dev -to-release

11. Integrations that are not following pre-defined flow Using ‘ p4 integrate //source/…@11,11 // dest /… ’ Example: integrate specific changelist across development streams, without going via main. Usually for inter-dependencies between developments. Alternative; use stream specification with ‘ import ’ Defined imports with ‘ import @ ’ available with p4d 2014.1 Writable imports become available with p4d 2014.2 Xstream integration: dev -to- dev

12. Stream specifications can be overruled with branch mapping

13. Stream: //depot/main Type: mainline Paths: share //… Stream: //depot/ dev -X Type: development Parent: //depot/main Paths: share //… import versions.txt //depot/main/versions.txt Stream spec vs branch mapping Client: depot_dev_ws View: //depot/ dev -X/… // depot_dev_ws /… !! No ‘Stream:’ but using branch mappings $ p4 edit versions.txt $ p4 submit –d “my own development identifiers in versions.txt” $ p4 copy //depot/ dev -X/… //depot/main/… $ p4 submit -d “copy up from dev stream” !! No –S <stream> for copy argument, but branch mappings Result: versions.txt changed on main! Final solution: RW permission group on main for this file educating users on p4 copy

14. Task- and Virtual streams

15. Most benefit on server side, less so for end-users Can be confusing when used with branch mapping When to use regular development stream vs task stream ? Task streams can be converted to type development, but conversion back is not possible We decided not to use them, instead we use development streams only Task streams

16. Reduce the amount of data that gets pulled into a workspace Compose product combinations with only imports One mainline with all imports for ‘mainlines’ Many virtual streams based on the mainline that overrule the imports with various ‘release’ imports Easy and cheap to make many combinations Virtual streams

17. c anary-main (type: mainline) import os /… //depot- os /main/… i mport engine/… //depot-engine/main/… i mport ui /… //depot- ui /main/… i mport engine/ ui -tweaks/… //depot- ui /main/tweaks/… c anary-ui-rel1 (type: virtual) s hare … import ui /… //depot- ui /rel-1/… i mport engine/ ui -tweaks/… //depot- ui /rel-1/tweaks/… c anary-ui-rel2 (type: virtual) s hare … i mport ui /… //depot-engine/rel-2/… import engine/ ui -tweaks/… // depot- ui /rel-2/tweaks /… Virtual streams

18. Addendum

19. ‘ p4 integrate –f ’ is evil ! a lternative is ‘ p4 copy ’ Use ‘ integ.engine = 3 ’ engine 3 is default, but maybe you have engine 2 specifically configured Import with stream specification not (yet) supported ‘import //… -S //depot/stream’ Addendum

20. Educate your user base Cherry picking integrations Cross integrations Stream specification versus branch mapping Task and virtual streams Summary

21. Thank you! Erik van Nooijen [email protected] # idonttweet