Init

This section describes how to start up a personal server using Init. Use this approach if you want to work in isolation on a personal server, developing and possibly branching code.

To initialize a personal server and set it up with everything needed to start versioning files, do one of the following:

  1. Click Init from the P4V toolbar

  2. From the Open Connection dialog:

    1. Select the Personal Server tab
    2. Click Initialize New Personal Server
conn dialog personal

For command-line equivalent of Init, see Initializing a Server

Read this first

The Unicode setting and case sensitivity check boxes should match those respective settings on the shared server that will be fetched from and pushed to. If you are unsure what these settings are, the following command-line command will return the pertinent information:

p4 -ztag -p <server> info

where <server> is something like “perforce:1666”. P4V 17.1 does not support the auto-discover option for DVCS Init.

Directories and files

Init creates the following directories and files in the directory in which the command is invoked:

  • .p4root - A directory containing the database files that will contain the metadata about files checked into Helix
  • .p4ignore - A list of files Helix shouldn’t add or reconcile
  • .p4config - A file containing configuration parameters for the client-server connection

In addition, Init does the following:

  • Creates a stream depot
  • Creates an initial stream called main
  • Creates a workspace. Note that the client option allwrite is set by default, making files writable without the need to check them out first

Add files

At this point, you are ready to add files to your personal server. You can create, copy, and mark for add your source files to be added to Helix and submit them. If you are new to P4V, see “Managing Files”.