Case sensitivity and multi-platform development

Very early (pre-97.2) releases of Helix server treated all filenames, pathnames, and database entity names with case significance, whether the server was running on UNIX or Windows.

For example, //depot/main/file.c and //depot/MAIN/FILE.C were treated as two completely different files. This caused problems where users on UNIX were connecting to a Helix Core server running on Windows because the filesystem underlying the server could not store files with the case-variant names submitted by UNIX users.

In release 97.3, the behavior was changed, and only the UNIX server supports case-sensitive names. However, there are still some case-sensitivity problems that users can encounter when sharing development projects across UNIX and Windows.

If you are running a pre-97.2 server on Windows, please contact [email protected] to discuss upgrading your server and database.

For current releases of the server:

• The Helix Core server on UNIX supports case-sensitive names.
• The Helix Core server on Windows ignores case differences.
• Case is always ignored in keyword-based job searches, regardless of platform.

The following table summarizes these rules.

Case-sensitive	UNIX server	Windows server
Pathnames and filenames	Yes	No
Database entities (workspaces, labels, and so on.)	Yes	No
Job search keywords	No	No

To find out what platform your Helix Core server runs on, use p4 info.