Perforce Disaster Recovery at Google: Plans and Experiences

by Richard Wright, Google

Source control systems such as Perforce are designed to protect a company's source code, documentation and intellectual property. However, it is also important that Perforce itself is protected against catastrophe. In this presentation, you'll learn about how Google has put into place hardware, infrastructure, plans, and procedures to protect against disasters both small and large. While these plans and procedures are not perfect, they are continually being improved and tested in an effort to protect against all foreseeable threats to Perforce and the data that it holds.

Download the Google White Paper | Google Presentation

Perforce at Pixar: Templar Asset Management

by Mark Harrison and Mike Sundy, Pixar

This presentation shows how Pixar extended Perforce from a traditional SCM system into a key component of Templar, their studio-wide asset management system. Also discussed are two new graphical clients (one each for artists and technical directors) written by Harrison and Sundy that integrated Perforce with the asset database, and how they created a scheme to bypass P4D and serve Perforce files directly from the back-end depots. Topics covered include:

• Concurrent access by thousands of render clients.
• Guaranteeing access to the data and metadata over the 50 year lifespan of Templar.
• Dealing with non-technical users such as digital artists and production coordinators.
• Storing large binary assets such as images and movie clips.

Download the Linkatron White Paper | Templar White Paper | Pixar Presentation

Visualizing the Cost of Divergence

by Anders Johnson, NVIDIA

Have you had disastrous branching experiences? The problem probably wasn't branching itself, but rather the divergence that branching facilitated. Source control systems that track merge history, such as Perforce, simplify the mechanics of branching and merging, but they don't eliminate the cost of divergence.

This talk introduces a simple divergence cost model which is easy to understand and visualize, and which is general enough to motivate strategic branching decisions. Several examples are included.

Download the NVIDIA White Paper | NVIDIA Presentation

The Sloth's Guide to Perforce Administration

by David Ferguson and Prakash Ranade, VMware

In 2002, VMware, Inc. had one product and 90 Perforce users. Today, they have over 25 products being developed by over 3,000 engineers. A small, centralized SCM group maintains control and support of the current 17 repositories, providing automated merging, branch creation, submission policies, training, monitoring, and user hand-holding. This presentation discusses some of the tools put into place to support these efforts, providing the flexibility demanded of a highly innovative development effort, while affording enough time to work on the fun parts. Learn about VMware's

• Automerge tool that allows nested, automatic merges to an entire hierarchy of branches
• Branch Management Policy system, allowing branch managers full control over submission policies on their branches
• Charting tool and discover its usefulness in identifying bottlenecks and areas of improvement

The presentation also identifies a couple of performance issues encountered along the way, as well as the tools and approaches used to identify and fix them. As a wrapup, the reporting portal, providing a one-stop shop for metrics that many engineering and release managers frequently request, is discussed.

Download the VMware Presentation

Using Perforce to Achieve Agility

by Victoria Hall, Bio-Rad Laboratories

As software development evolves toward more agile methodologies (SCRUM, XP, RUP) , engineering best practices become key to ensuring the delivery of high quality software that best meets customers' needs. This talk will briefly introduce agile methodologies and the best practices that facilitate successful agile implementations. The focus will be on SCM practices (especially that of continuous integration) and go through the details of a Perforce-enabled system, using a team at Bio-Rad Laboratories as the example.

Download the Bio-Rad Laboratories White Paper | Bio-Rad Laboratories Presentation

Peer Code Review with Perforce

by Jason Cohen, SmartBear

Peer code reviews can be one of the most effective ways to find bugs. However, developers hate heavy process and it's easy to waste time. In this talk, Cohen describes how Perforce supports lightweight code review practices that can succeed where more cumbersome methods fail. He demonstrates how Perforce can best be used to support three types of lightweight code review: over the shoulder, email pass-around, and tool-assisted. A discussion of pre- versus post-commit code review is included, along with advice on branching policy, checklists, the social effects of code review, and whether or not code review metrics really mean anything.

Download the SmartBear White Paper | SmartBear Presentation

The Content Creator's Label

by Jeff Grills, Junction Point Studios

Video game development involves both programmers as well as content creators. Content creators are game designers, artists, animators, writers, translators, sound technicians, etc. They typically use custom tools that were built in a standardized fashion and tested before being deployed to create and modify content for the final project. However, programmers often use tools they themselves built from the latest source code available. Programmers' tools may therefore be newer than the content creators' tools and produce incompatible content, yet both groups need to be able to modify as much of the project's content as possible.

One solution for this problem involves branching, but some of the ramifications make it inappropriate to branch in certain situations. This talk explores the pros and cons of a lighter-weight solution using the "Content Creator's" Label.

Download the Junction Point Studios White Paper | Junction Point Studios Presentation

Perforce + Java: The Best of Both Worlds

by Hamish Reid and Kevin Sawicki, Perforce Software, Inc.

Perforce's new Java product strategy brings a Java-natural approach to both traditional and agile development environments, as evidenced in the re-architected version of P4WSAD, the Perforce Plug-in for Eclipse. A crucial part of the new strategy is a Java-native API (P4Java) that allows users and developers to access Perforce from within Java apps and plug-ins in Java-natural ways, and to smoothly integrate Perforce functionality into tools such as CruiseControl, Maven, and Ant, and in environments such as the J2EE web applications and web services frameworks.

This talk presents Perforce's new Java strategy and the thinking behind it, illustrated with real-world demonstrations of the Perforce + Java products at work. In particular, the talk focuses on examples of the Perforce + Java combination's powerful support for agile techniques such as continuous integration and refactoring, and applications such as Perforce-backed web services.

Download the Perforce + Java White Paper| Perforce + Java Presentation

Adventures in Scripting Land

by Sven Erik Knop, Perforce Software, Inc.

Various scripting interfaces for Perforce have been available for some time but, in 2008, Perforce added P4Perl, P4Ruby, and P4Python as officially supported products. This presentation shows how to use these APIs and explores their latest features and benefits. Examples of common scripting tasks, interesting triggers, and exciting applications are inlcuded.

Download the Perforce Scripting APIs White Paper | Perforce Scripting APIs Presentation

P4V Mythbusters: Fact or Fiction?

by Stephanie Turner and James Creasy, Perforce Software, Inc.

It's a tough job separating truth from urban legend, but the P4V developers are here to serve. Can a developer really work safely and effectively offline? Does an admin have to suffer hypoxia when mucking with the protections table? Watch the experts bust the myths with the coolest and newest features in P4V. Find out just how easy it is to branch, merge, and back out changes.

Download the Perforce P4V Presentation

Repository Structure Considerations for Performance

by Michael Shields and Tim Brazil, Perforce Software, Inc.

The structure of a repository can affect performance. Decisions such as the length of paths and products as depots or first-level directories can affect the structure of Perforce metadata stored in bTrees within the Perforce db.* files. Different bTree structures can result in different Perforce Server performance characteristics.

This paper discusses how the structure of metadata stored in bTrees within the db.* files is affected by fundamental decisions of structuring a repository. Also discussed is the effect of these decisions on Perforce Server performance. The different performance characteristics are illustrated by results of Perforce benchmarks. Some internals of the db.* files are provided to further the understanding of the effects.

Download the Perforce Performance White Paper| Perforce Performance Presentation

Server Deployment Best Practices

by Tom Tyler, Perforce Software, Inc.

This presentation provides an overview of the generic best practices that Perforce Consulting applies when setting up a new Perforce server instance.

Download the Perforce Deployment White Paper | Perforce Deployment Presentation

Better Living Through New Releases

by Richard Baum, Perforce Software, Inc.

Perforce is great and, like a fine wine, it gets better with time. Are you taking advantage of the latest server features and fixes? Learn about recent performance-related changes and how you can benefit from them. You'll want the latest and greatest for your server!

Download the Perforce Server Releases White Paper | Perforce Server Releases Presentation

When Lightning Strikes

by Russell Jackson and Richard Baum, Perforce Software, Inc.

System administrators and planners need to be prepared for hardware failure and other disasters. This talk focuses on high availability and disaster recovery solutions for Perforce. General information on a wide range of hardware configurations is provided and the system availability, fail-over, and disaster recovery time options each configuration provides is discussed.

Download the Perforce Hardware Presentation