Perforce Adds Significant Advancements to Its Software Configuration Management System

Alameda, Calif., January 11, 2010—Perforce Software today released version 2009.2 of its Software Configuration Management (SCM) system. This new release offers a variety of major productivity improvements with the addition of shelving, real-time metadata replication and additional functionality for working offline.

“We are constantly working to respond to our customers’ needs and this release offers an array of important new capabilities that appeal to both large and small development teams,” said Kathy Baldanza, vice president of engineering at Perforce Software. “Shelving improves team collaboration and facilitates code review, additional offline capabilities make users more productive while working disconnected from their servers, and we’ve added real-time replication capabilities to improve overall system performance and data protection.”

Shelving improves team collaboration

With the new shelving feature, developers can cache modified files in the Perforce Server without first having to check them in as a versioned change (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: With Perforce Shelving, users can view both active work in progress and files that are on-hold.

Shelving improves team collaboration and gives developers more flexibility in managing multiple projects. For example, Perforce Shelving allows users to:

• Pass pending changes to managers as part of Code Review or Approval workflows,
• Share work-in-progress with another team member or workstation,
• Make a change and then test in a distributed build environment, and
• Put aside an effort because a higher priority task arrived.

Shelving is supported by the 2009.2 Perforce Server, and the visual and command-line clients.

New features improve developer productivity while working offline

Developers can now work disconnected, with all file changes and history preserved when the user comes back online. With the Perforce Visual Client, users can easily edit any file taken offline, add new files, and mark existing files for deletion. Sequential changes can be scheduled for submission to the server, simplifying reconciliation of changes made when connectivity is restored.

Real-time replication of metadata improves system performance and data protection

Perforce provides an automated mechanism for copying metadata from one server to another. This improves overall system performance by allowing administrators and developers the ability to run reports and database queries on the secondary server, rather than consuming resources on the primary one.

This new replication feature also ensures data protection by playing an important role in customers’ High Availability/Disaster Recovery (HADR) strategy to provide continuous access to Perforce. This can help eliminate costly downtime in the event of a planned or unplanned outage by enabling continuous data availability.

Availability & Pricing

Perforce 2009.2 is available now. Interested developers are invited to download and evaluate Perforce free from the Perforce website. This offer includes free technical support during evaluation.

Perforce pricing is all-inclusive; there are no add-on components that require licensing. End-user licenses for the complete solution, including one year of support and maintenance, start at $900 per seat; volume discounts are available. For additional price and license information, visit perforce.com.

About the Perforce SCM System

Perforce, the Fast Software Configuration Management System, is an award- winning tool that versions and manages source code and digital assets for enterprises large and small. Perforce is easy to install, learn and administer; seamlessly handles distributed development; and supports developers across a large number of platforms. Perforce ensures development integrity by grouping multi-file updates into atomic changes, enables concurrent development, and intelligently manages multiple software releases using its Inter-File Branching system.