Optional: Custom development

Perforce provides a virtual file service implementation for end users. P4VFS is an implementation that makes use of an agent that relies on the P4ALTSYNC environment variable to provide a syncing mechanism that is an alternative to the traditional Helix Core sync mechanism. Hence the name P4ALTSYNC.

However, if you are a software developer at an organization that wants to implement a different solution for a virtual file service, you can use this Guide's protocol reference to implement your own agent.

Operating systems

Although P4VFS is available solely on Windows because it depends on Windows-specific APIs, the P4ALTSYNC protocol is cross-platform.

Prerequisites for your custom agent

The custom agent must:

• be specified in the P4ALTSYNC environment variable in one of the following ways:

  • a path to the agent's executable

  • a named pipe prefixed with pipe: on which the agent is listening

• use the JSON Protocol commands in the Protocol reference