About This Manual

Perforce 99.2 Command Line User Guide (99.2.ug.2)


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Preface
About This Manual
This is the Perforce 99.2 User's Guide. It teaches the use of Perforce's command-line interface; other Perforce clients such as p4win (our Windows GUI) aren't discussed here. If you'd like documentation on other Perforce clients, please see our documentation page: http://www.perforce.com/technical.html.

Although you can use this guide as a reference manual, we intend it primarily as guide/tutorial on using Perforce. The full syntax of most of the Perforce commands is explicitly not provided here; in particular, only a subset of the available flags are mentioned. For a complete guide to Perforce, please see the Perforce Command Reference, or the on-line help system. If you will be using Perforce on any operating system other than UNIX, please consult the release notes for that OS.

Chapters 2 through 4 of this manual comprise our Getting Started guide. Newcomers to Perforce should start there, and move to subsequent chapters as needed.

Administering Perforce?

If you're administering a Perforce server, you'll need our Perforce System Administrator's Guide, which contains all the system administration material formerly found in this manual. If you're installing Perforce, the System Administrator's Guide is the place to start.

New 99.2 Features

We've marked those features new to Perforce 99.2 with changebars in the right margin. The release notes provide more detailed information, and are available from our web site.

The Example Set

We've attempted to develop a uniform example set for use with this manual. All of the examples use the source code for Elm, a popular UNIX mail program. We selected the Elm source code for a number of reasons:

Elm is widely used, and many Perforce users will be familiar with the program. If they are not, they will at least understand what it does.
The source code is stored in well-organized subdirectories, which allow us to demonstrate certain capabilities of Perforce.
The source code for Elm is widely available; users of this manual can download Elm and try the examples as they're encountered.

Links to the Elm source code can be found at http://www.myxa.com/elm.html

We are using the Elm source with the kind permission of Sydney Weinstein and Bill Pemberton of the USENET Community Trust.

Disclaimer: To the best of our knowledge, the Elm team has never used Perforce for source management; in fact, they had no knowledge of Perforce until they received our email asking for permission to use their code in our manual. No implication that the Elm team uses or endorses Perforce is intended; none should be inferred.

Please Give Us Feedback

We are always interested in receiving feedback on our manuals. Does this guide teach the topic well? Are there any glaring errors? Are the explanations clear, or are the exemplifications obfuscated by this enchiridion? Please let us know what you think; we can be reached at [email protected].

Perforce 99.2 Command Line User Guide (99.2.ug.2)


<< Previous Chapter Table of Contents	Table of Contents Glossary Perforce on the Web	Next Chapter >> Perforce Concepts