Introduction to Perforce

Basic Terminology

• Depot: the central repository where files revisions are stored and managed by Perforce.
• Workspace: the area on your computer where you work with your copies of files in the depot.
• Server: the program that manages file revisions.
• Changelist: A group of files, with a description explaining how you’ve changed them (for example, “Fix bug #123”). Changelists are assigned numbers by the Perforce Server so you can track them.

The following diagram shows the relationship between workspace and depot.

Basic Tasks

• Sync a file: Retrieve a copy of a file version from the depot.
• Open a file: Notify the server that you are changing the file. You can open files for add, edit, or delete. When you open a file, the file is added to a changelist.
• Revert a file: Discard any changes you have made to an open file. If you open a file for edit and make changes, then change your mind and revert the file, Perforce reloads the last version you got from the depot and discards your changes.
• Submit a changelist: Update the depot to reflect any changes you’ve made to open files. Submitting is an all-or-nothing operation: if there’s a problem submitting one file in a changelist, none of the other files in the changelist are updated.

This product includes software developed by the Eclipse Project (http://www.eclipse.org/).