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<h1 class="p4dbreadme">Administrators README for P4DB Version 4.0</h1>
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Introduction</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
This is a README for P4DB, a CGI based p4 depot browser written by
Fredric Fredricson (<a href="mailto:Fredric.Fredricson@bonetmail.com">fredric@mydata.se</a>)
<P Class="Norm">
The graphic "Branch Relationships" page is written by <b>Todd Short</b>
(see Todd's <A href="branchGraph.readme.txt">readme file</A>). <br>
More credits <A href="#Credits">at the end</A>.
</P>
<P Class="Norm">The README
is intended for administrators and others that want to install, maintain,
and possibly contribute to, P4DB.
</P>
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Table Of Contents</h2>
<P Class=TOC>
<ul class=TOC>
<li>
<a href="#About">About</a>
<li>
<a href="#Software">Software Requirements</a>
<li>
<a href="#Supported_platforms">Platforms and Compatibility</a>
<li>
<a href="#Installation">Installation and Configuration</a>
<li>
<a href="#Known">Known Bugs</a>
<li>
<a href="#Diffs">What's New</a>
<li>
<a href="#Licensing">Licensing</a>
<li>
<a href="#Warranty">Warranty</a>
<li>
<a href="#Contrib">Would You Like To Contribute?</a>
<li>
<a href="#Doc">Design Documentation</a>
<li>
<a href="#Credits">Credits</a>
</ul>
</P>
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="About"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">About</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
P4DB is designed to provide a user friendly and intuitive
interface to the p4 depot. Information is presented using a web
browser and most pages combine output from two or more p4
commands. <br>
The driving force behind the development has been my needs as a
manager for a software team, the needs for our project leaders to
document changes in the code line and the need for our programmers
to analyze changes in the code line (and most important, of
course, the need for me as a frustrated software engineer promoted
to my level of incompetence to get my hands on a nice little
programming project).
<P Class="Norm">
The browser is written in perl and developed on a Linux/Apache
system and has been tested mainly with Firefox although some of
our users use MS Explorer and no problems has been reported.
<h3 class="p4dbreadme">Why P4DB?</h3>
<P Class="Norm">
P4DB is inspired by a depot browser, perfbrowse.perl,
made available by
<a href="http://www.perforce.com">Perforce</a> at
<a href="http://www.perforce.com/perforce/loadsupp.html#browse">
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/loadsupp.html#browse</a>
Perfbrowse.perl is written in perl and the author is unknown to
me.
<P Class="Norm">
The idea is also stolen so I can't claim that one.
<P Class="Norm">
I liked perfbrowse.perl very much but wanted just a little more
functionality. I started to add functionality and it quickly got
out of hand. Soon I had a huuuge perl script that I could no
longer maintain. Once I realized that I can write a perl script
that is about 2-4 times the size of the script that I can maintain
I decided to rewrite it all from the start as a set of small,
maintainable, perl scripts. I leave to others to judge if I
succeeded in my mission.
<br>
<i>(Maybe I should mention that it took much more time than I
anticipated).</i>
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Software"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Software requirements</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
P4DB version 4.0 requires:
<UL Class="Norm">
<li>
Perl 5.004 or newer with the CGI.pm and GD.pm modules
installed.
<br>
The CGI.pm module can be downloaded from
<a href="http://www.cpan.org/">http://www.cpan.org/</a>
<A href="http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=CGI.pm">(link to
CGI.pm)</A>.
<br>
The gd library is available at
<A href="http://www.boutell.com/gd">http://www.boutell.com/gd</A>
and the GD.pm module at <A
href="http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/GD/GD.html">
http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/GD/GD.html</A>
<hr>
<li>
A http server that supports CGI:s. Apache
will do just fine.
<hr>
<li>
P4 server 2004.2 or later.
</UL>
</P>
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Supported_platforms"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Supported platforms and compatibility</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
There is no real "list of supported platforms" simply because
there is no real support for P4DB. I just write it, test it a little, and
release it.
<P Class="Norm">
<b>Http server:</b>
<br>
P4DB is developed on a Linux box running Fedora Core 3 and Apache,
runs in production on RedHat 7.2/Apache, and has been reported
to run on SUN/Solaris and NT/IIS platforms as well. The NT
platform require MKS toolkit or similar and some tweaking,
though.
<P Class="Norm">
<b>Browser:</b>
<br>
All development work is done using FireFox version 1.0 (preview)
but I usually perform some basic testing with MS-Explorer and sometimes
Netscape.
P4DB should work with a recent browser with reasonable
support for CSS (Cascaded Style Sheets) and
javascript.
<br>
P4DB is <u>not</u> designed for character mode browsers such
as Lynx.
<br>
And, by the way, the P4DB use cookies. Without cookies enabled you will
not even be able to log in to P4DB.
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Installation"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Installation and configuration</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
NOTE: This installation description assumes that the reader is
familiar with http servers, cgi scripts and, to a small degree,
perl.
<h3 class="p4dbreadme">First: Where to install</h3>
<P Class="Norm">
Other than the obvious, that is somewhere in a http servers CGI
path, I recommend you to set up a http server on your p4 server
and run P4DB on that server. The main reasons are that it improves
response time and reduce network load.
<h3 class="p4dbreadme">How to install</h3>
<P Class="Norm">
If you use Linux and downloaded the tarball (that is, not the zip-file) you
can follow the instructions below. If not, go to "Installation without <tt>install.pl</tt>"
<ol Class="Norm">
<li>
You obviously got to this README. Together
with README.html file you got:
<ul>
<li><tt>install.pl</tt>
<li><tt>cgi_files.tar</tt>
<li><tt>P4CGI.html</tt>
<li><tt>P4DB.conf.txt</tt>
</ul>
Move all these files together with <tt>README.html</tt>
to the cgi-bin directory used by the web server or wherever
you want P4DB installed. Or you could just move the original
tarball or zip archive and unpack it.
<li>
Type "<tt>perl install.pl</tt>" To install
all scripts.
<br>
Install.pl will unpack all cgi scripts
and modifies the first line to contain the path to perl.
<br>For details, see the <tt><a href="install.pl">install.pl</a></tt>
script.
<li>
The file <tt>index.cgi</tt> is the start page
for P4DB. Create your links to it..
</ol>
<P Class="Norm">
This is the theory, at least. I have not tested
it on many systems
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">Installation without <tt>install.pl</tt></h4>
<P Class="Norm">
If <tt>install.pl</tt> don't work
for you here is what it does that you need to do manually:
<ol Class="Norm">
<li>
Verify that perl and the perl module CGI.pm
is available
<li>
Unpack cgi_file.tar (<tt>tar -xf cgi_files.tar</tt>) or
cgi_file.zip
<li>
Find path to perl
<li>
Change first line of every file with extension
".cgi", ".pl" or ".perl" to contain correct path to perl
</ol>
</blockquote>
<h3 class="p4dbreadme">How to configure</h3>
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">Basic configuration</h4>
<P Class="Norm">
The basic configuration file is named P4DB.conf. The file
is not included in the package but a sample configuration
file called <tt><a href="P4DB.conf.txt">P4DB.conf.txt</a></tt> is.
<p class=Norm>
Copy the file P4DB.conf.txt to P4DB.conf
and modify it. The instructions are included in the file.
<p class=Norm>
Each p4 user that should be able to use P4DB must have at least read
access from the machine that P4DB runs on to the parts of the depot he/she
should have access to through P4DB.
P4 groups may come in handy here.
<a NAME="SecurityNote1"></a>
<P class=Note>
<B>Security Note 1:</B><br> P4DB asks for a p4 user to access
the depot. <b>It is wise to give users read priviliges
only on the P4DB host.</b> This protects the depot from
errors in P4DB that <u>might</u> affect the depot status.
<P class=Note>
<B>Security Note 2:</B><br> P4DB does not provide any strong access
protection or other security. It is not possible to modify
the depot using P4DB so poorly trained or inexperienced
operators should not be able to damage the depot.
<a NAME="SecurityNote3"></a>
<P class=Note>
<B>Security Note 3:</B><br>
During the login procedure the p4 user name and password are
transmitted unencrypted over the network.
If this is not acceptable you should use the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
and TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocols.
Unfortunately I am not an expert in these matters and can not
give you any help here other than point you to the
<a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mod_ssl.html">mod_ssl module documentation</a>
in Apache.
<p class="Norm">
I also recommend that you read the <a href="#Warranty">Warranty</a>-paragraph.
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">Configure file types (for viewers)</h4>
<P Class="Norm">
P4DB will let users view some file types using applications
like MS-Word for Word-file etc. This can be configured in a
file <a href="viewConfig.pm">viewConfig.pm</a>. Default will
let you view HTML, gif, jpeg, MS-Word, MS-Powerpoint, and
Acrobat (PDF) formats. See file <a href="viewConfig.pm">
viewConfig.pm</a> for details.
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Known"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Known bugs</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
<ul Class="Norm">
<li>
A serious case of Feature Bloat.
</ul>
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Diffs"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Diffs between versions</h2>
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">New to P4DB 4.0:</h4>
<dl class="Norm">
<dt class="Norm">Added a login page
<dd>P4DB now requires the user to log in and supply a p4 user and a password.
See also <a href="#SecurityNote3">Security Note 3</a>
<dt class="Norm">Require 2004.2
<dd>P4DB require both the client and server to be of version 2004.2 or newer.
The reason for this is that P4DB use the ticket based authentication introduced in
this release.
</dl>
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">New to P4DB 3.1:</h4>
<p class="Norm">
P4DB 3.1 is a frame-less version of 3.0. The frame stuff was not appreciated
by the users at all. The main problem was that
it made it difficult to take the URL and slap it in an email to another
developer to point something out, something the users do frequently.
<p class="Norm">
Another thing that really killed the frame based solution was the (wonderful!)
tabs in Netscape 7 and other Mozilla-based browsers. No doubt the next version
of MS-Explorer will have some similar feature if they have the slightest clue
in Redmond. With frames the "open in new tab"-feature became somewhat awkward.
<p class="Norm">
Apart from the above the follwing things have changed:
<dl class="Norm">
<dt class="Norm"> The "p4 annotate" command is used to view files.
<dd>The "annotate" command provides a nice view of a complete file history.
Previous versions of P4DB did part of this using the p4pr.perl script written
by Bob Sidebotham, but the "p4 annotate" provides more info. Thank you, Perforce.
<dt class="Norm"> The header comes in two flavours, pulldown menues and buttons.
<dd>The pulldown menues or buttons are used to select page. The pulldown menu
use less space but Explorer does not display all menu options (you have to scroll)
and this makes buttons more convenient. The user selects in the User Preferences
page.
<dt class="Norm"> The user can specify start page.
<dd>The script "index.cgi" does not really display anything, it only forwards
the user to the start page. Default is "intro.cgi" but the user can modify this
using a button in the page header.
<dt class="Norm"> A few other small improvements..
<dd>I have made some small improvements to the branch and label views and to
quite a few other pages as well.
</dl>
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">New to P4DB 3.0:</h4>
<p class="Norm">
P4DB is, again, completley rewritten (well.. almost) only this
time I did not add much functionality other than a completley
different user interface that I hope will be more efficient.
<P class=Note>
NOTE! Configuration file for 2.1 not compatible with 3.0.
<p class="Norm">
Here are a few of the changes:
<dl Class="Norm">
<dt class="Norm">User defined "shortcuts"
<dd>A user can define her own personal "shortcuts". Pretty
much like browser bookmarks/favorites only bookmarks
can not really be used for a frame-based web applications.
<dt class="Norm">Graphic "Branch Relationships" page.
<dd>Displays branch relationships in a graph. Contributed by
Todd Short. Requires the GD.pm perl module.
<dt class="Norm">Next and previous keys in change view
<dd>When you view a change there are next and previous links
that displays next and previous changes. If you entered the
page asking for changes for a specific path in the depot the
next and previous links will follow this path.
<dt class="Norm">(Almost) all formatting done in CSS
<dd>Output formatting is specified in a CSS file (P4DB.css).
<dt class="Norm">Full descriptions are always shown
<dd>Change descriptions are never displayed in a truncated
form (in 2.1 displaying a full change description was
sometimes an option).
<dt class="Norm">Removed "shortcut files"
<dd>P4DB 2.1 had some optional "shortcut files" that the
administrator could specify. They are gone. I never liked the
idea myself (even though it was mine).
<dt class="Norm">Java browswer no longer part of P4BD
<dd>The Java browser was optional and never really well
integrated with P4DB.
</dl>
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">New to P4DB 2.1:</h4>
<dl Class="Norm">
<dt class="Norm">Better support for jobs and fixes
<dd><ul>
<li>The file log page contains a "Fixes" section that list
closed jobs related to this file.
<li>The Depot Tree Browser page contains a link to view
jobs related to files below current position.
<li>Improved the job list
</ul>
<dt class="Norm">Works for p4 2001.1
<dd>There is a nice feature in 2001.1 that P4DB use to make
label cross reference in file log page much, much faster.
<dt class="Norm">Warning levels for unused users and clients in P4 Users and
groups page configurable
<dd>The warning level are set in the configuration file
<dt class="Norm">"#include" in c-files links to file search
<dd>The colorC.pl script makes #includes links to file search cgi. (Silly
feature that was easy to implement)
<dt class="Norm">Warning level for unused users and clients configurable.
<dd>The user and client lists will print a warning next to users and clients
that has not been accessed for a number of weeks. This number is now
configurable in <tt>P4DB.conf</tt>.
</dl>
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">New to P4DB 2.01:</h4>
<dl Class="Norm">
<dt class="Norm">Works for p4 2000.2beta
<dd>The jobspec command was changed and now P4DB understands
both 2000.2beta as well as 2000.1 thru 98.2.
<dt class="Norm">Works for p4 2000.1
<dd>The depot statistics did not work properly for p4 release
2000.1
<dt class="Norm">Made easier to port
<dd>The configuration file now contains fields for command to redirect to
null device and command to redirect to stdout. This makes it
easier to port P4DB to NT that thinks /dev/null is called
NUL:.
<P class=Note>
Configuration file for 2.0 not compatible with 2.01
<br>
<br>
<dt class="Norm">Java GUI browser improved
<dd>Can now handle filenames containing spaces
<dt class="Norm">Label diff view rewritten
<dd>The old code was buggy and difficult to maintain
<dt class="Norm">Made some code more maintainable
<dd>Modified client view and label view code to make it more maintainable.
</dl>
<h4 class="p4dbreadme">Diff earlier version of P4DB to 2.0:</h4>
<P Class="Norm">
The difference is so huge that I do not care
to list it. P4DB 2.0 can simply do much more than earlier versions.
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Licensing"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Licensing</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
There is no license for P4DB.
You are free to use it for any purpose.
<br>
I might decide to apply GPL to it some
time in the future but I doubt that I will bother....
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Warranty"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Warranty</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
If you get any problems because of these scripts I promise
to feel sorry for you. Other than that you are
on your own.
<P Class=Note>
Please note for the record that I do not even claim that
P4DB can be used to browse the P4 depot. I will also inform
you that even though the intention is that P4DB should not
in any way modify the depot
status I can make no promises that this is can not happen.<br><br>
And please remember that it would be easy for someone to grab the
P4DB code, insert a few malicious lines of code, and
"release" it with this "Trojan Horse".
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Contrib"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Would you like to contribute?</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
If you would like to contribute changes/improvements/new functions
the best way is to become a registered user at the
<a href="http://public.perforce.com/public/index.html"
title="Link to Perforce Public Depot">
Perforce Public Depot</a>, branch from
<tt>//guest/fredric_fredricson/P4DB/main/...</tt>, make the changes and
send me a
<a href="mailto:Fredric.Fredricson@bonetmail.com" title="Mailto-link to me">
email</a>.<br>
I can of course not promise that I will like your
changes and immediately integrate them to P4DB but if not you can
always start you own competing version of P4DB, I do not mind.
<p class="Norm">
If Perforce Public Depot does not work for you you can just send
me an
<a href="mailto:Fredric.Fredricson@bonetmail.com" title="Mailto-link to me">
email</a> and describe the changes.
<h3 class="p4dbreadme">What would be a contribution?</h3>
<P Class="Norm">
I will be glad for any kind of contributions
ranging from corrections of my bad English to new interesting
functionality. Nice letters are also welcome.
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Doc"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Design documentation</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
The most important documentation is in the P4CGI.pm module.
This modules is used by all scripts and contains
a set of common functions that are useful or defines some common "look
and feel" or both.
<P Class="Norm">
The P4CGI.pm module is documented using
perlpod (see perlpod man page). To get a HTML page
containing documentation
type:
<br>
<tt>pod2html P4CGI.pm ><a href="P4CGI.html">P4CGI.html</a></tt>
(There is one distributed with P4DB, for convenience)
<P Class="Norm">
For other files: more often than not the
code is commented.
<P Class="Norm">
There are three different files 'types'
in the design:
<dl COMPACT Class="Norm">
<dt class="Norm"> P4CGI.pm
<dd> - A perl module containing functions that
I find useful and all other scripts use
<dt class="Norm"> *.cgi
<dd> - A set of cgi scripts that are used as ...eh..
cgi-scripts.
</dl>
<P Class="Norm">
The code also uses the CGI.pm perl module.
This module should be part of the "standard distribution" of perl (if there
is such a thing). If you do not have the module it is available for download at
<a href="http://www.cpan.org">www.cpan.org</a>.
<P Class="Norm">
As a part of my personal religion the -w
flag is always turned on and 'use strict' flag is also set. I have never
had any reason to regret this particular peculiarity of mine but it might
cause some warning messages that will be printed to the browsers error
log.
<P Class="Norm">
Performance has not been a great issue.
I assume that these cgi's will not have thousands
of hits each day and
the design has focused on ease of
development rather than speed.
<!-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -->
<a NAME="Credits"></a>
<h2 class="p4dbreadme">Credits</h2>
<P Class="Norm">
An incomplete list of people that has contributed to P4DB in different ways:
<ul Class="Norm">
<li>Diane Holt - Diane has also released her own version of P4DB
adapted to NT. I think it's available in Perforce Public Depot.
<li>Lawrence You
<li>Ron Shalhoup
<li>Rob Chandhok
<li>Carl Martinsson - A colleague of mine that use P4DB a lot and
contributed a lot of ideas for new functions.
<li>Eric Engberg - Provided valuable information on how to
facilitate ports to NT/Apache.
<li>Lee Marzke - For valuable bug reporting
<li>Todd Short - For the graphic branch graphs
<li>Scott Roland - For a suggestion on how to mark deleted directories in the depot tree view
<li>Charles Hardin - For some bug fixes and XML view
</ul>
<P Class="Norm">
There are more but these are the only names I found in my records.
</body>
</html>
| # | Change | User | Description | Committed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #13 | 4989 | Fredric Fredricson |
P4DB: Some small fixed in documentation and make shortcut icon configurable |
||
| #12 | 4883 | Fredric Fredricson |
P4DB: * Added a warning in intro page for untested versions * Some CSS changes * Updated info in README file and on intro page |
||
| #11 | 4834 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB: Incremented version to 4.0beta1 | ||
| #10 | 4237 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB: Maybe the final submit for P4DB 3.1.0 | ||
| #9 | 4216 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB: Another partial submit on my way to P4DB 3.1... | ||
| #8 | 4176 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB: Still working my way to P4DB 3.1... | ||
| #7 | 4069 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB: More changes on the way to 3.1 | ||
| #6 | 4046 | Fredric Fredricson |
P4DB: First submit for 3.1. * Removed frame-stuff and some related files * Added new page header * Started update of documentation * Changed a lot of CGI:s to conform to new "look and feel" Still a lot to do: - clean up stuff (especially the javascript) - Fix the file list to use new annotate-command - Clean up and document css-file - and more....... |
||
| #5 | 2922 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB: Started to update README for 3.0 | ||
| #4 | 2875 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB 3.0 first beta... | ||
| #3 | 1922 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB: Some updates of the README file | ||
| #2 | 1913 | Fredric Fredricson |
P4DB: Updated file log view with a link to branch graph and the README with information about the branchGraph cgi |
||
| #1 | 1638 | Fredric Fredricson | P4DB: Added all (I think) files for P4DB |