Perforce Real-World Lab III: Now it's live!

Abstract
The goal of this workshop is to explore and learn various ways to use Perforce in a real work scenario. Our focus will be on ways of structuring the depot and how different structures support the engineering process.

For our third year we're going to go live: We'll be presenting a 100% simulated real-world scenario. The participants will then break up into small teams with laptops and experiment using Perforce with live data on a live server! Like the real world, some of the requirements may come after the teams are underway... Along the way we'll survey the solutions the teams implemented and see the pros and cons of different approaches.

This workshop is for everyone! Each team needs a variety of people to make it work: Perforce novices and Perforce experts, computer jockeys and people who are more comfortable with a pencil.

If you plan to attend this workshop, you must register for it in advance! Please email conference@perforce.com.

Laptops: We need at least one person with a laptop per team. If you'll be bringing your laptop to the conference, and will be attending this workshop, here's what you'll want to know:

  • Only you will operate your laptop. Even though you'll be working in small groups, the other people won't need to work your computer.
  • The sample data sets you'll be working with are simple text files. You won't be exposing your computer to any potentially damaging files.
  • Almost any laptop will work. Here are the requirements:

OS

 Windows 95/98/NT/2000
Macintosh 7.5 or later
Linux

Networking

 Ethernet adapter, 10base-T

The workshop network will be using DHCP to automatically configure networking. Laptops are often already set up to use DHCP. You can check or change the networking setup with:

Windows 95/98
Network Control Panel > TCP/IP (for your Ethernet adapter) > IP Address > choose "Obtain an IP address automatically"
Windows NT/2000
Similar to the above, though how you get to the TCP/IP properties varies by setup.
Macintosh
Control Panels > TCP/IP > Configure: > choose "Using DHCP Server"
Linux
Configuration varies widely by distribution and version. If you're using Linux on a laptop, you should already know how to set up networking.

Software

 You'll need the following software:
  • A modern web browser: Netscape 4.0 or better, or Internet Explorer 4.0 or better
  • A text editor you are familiar with. We recommend TextPad, but Notepad will work
  • Perforce client(s). These will be available at the conference, but if you have them installed, so much the better. The latest version is recommended, but 98.1 or later should suffice

Disk Space

 You'll need about a megabyte free on your hard disk. You'll need about five megabytes free if you'll be installing Perforce at the conference.