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  1. <html>
  2. <head>
  3. <title>The Branching Papers -- Perforce FAQs</title>
  4. <head>
  5. <body bgcolor=#ffffff>
  6. <font size=-2><b><a href="branching.html#br06">[INDEX]</a></b></font>
  7. <p>
  8. <b>
  9. Is there a way to see what a branch view looked like in the past?
  10. Can this information be determined from "filelog" output?
  11. </b>
  12. <blockquote>
  13. Unfortunately, <b>p4 filelog</b> does not give you a synopsis; it gives
  14. you detail. So, to regenerate a branch view, you'd have to write
  15. a script that does quite a bit of analysis of the 
  16. <b>p4 filelog</b> output. In fact, since
  17. <b>p4 filelog</b> reports the entire history of files, a 
  18. very clever script
  19. could reproduce a branch view as it looked at any point in time.
  20. But I have to admit
  21. I'd rather look in old checkpoints to find a lost branch view than
  22. write this clever script...
  23. <p>
  24. The branch view is one of several data entities that are stored in
  25. a Perforce server's metadata but not versioned. Other such entities
  26. include clients, users, depots, labels, and jobs. These are fairly
  27. static entities, and the original Perforce philosophy was
  28. (1) versioning these entities would add more overhead than value, 
  29. (2) users can store and version specs for these entities at will,
  30. and 
  31. (3) these entities can always be restored from checkpoints. 
  32. <p>
  33. Nevertheless, customers have requested some way of versioning these
  34. entities, and we have talked about this as a future enhancement.
  35. In the interim, we advise users who are interested in versioning
  36. any of these entities to simply output the specs to files and check the
  37. files in. 
  38. <p>
  39. To version branch views, you could use a wrapper script for the
  40. <b>p4 branch</b> command. E.g., say you had a script called 'verbranch'
  41. which was invoked as 'verbranch neptune'. The script would do
  42. something like this to allow the user to edit the 'neptune' branch
  43. view and submit the new branch view automatically:
  44. <pre>
  45. 	p4 sync //depot/entities/neptune.branch
  46. 	p4 edit //depot/entities/neptune.branch
  47. 	p4 branch neptune 
  48. 	p4 branch -o > $MYCLIENT/entities/neptune.branch
  49. 	p4 submit //depot/entities/neptune.branch
  50. </pre> 
  51. Your script could also restore previous versions of the branch view.
  52. E.g., 'verbranch neptune -r@456' would restore the branch view to the
  53. way it looked back when the highest changelist in the depot was 456:
  54. <pre>
  55. 	p4 sync //depot/entities/neptune.branch
  56. 	p4 edit //depot/entities/neptune.branch
  57. 	p4 print -q //depot/entities/neptune.branch@456 | p4 branch -i neptune
  58. 	p4 branch -o > $MYCLIENT/entities/neptune.branch
  59. 	p4 submit //depot/entities/neptune.branch
  60. </pre>
  61. </blockquote>
  62.  
  63. <p>
  64. <i>(April 1998)</i>
  65. </p>
  66. <font size=-2><b><a href="branching.html#br06">[INDEX]</a></b></font>
  67.  
  68. <hr>
  69. <h6>This is file $Id: //guest/laura_wingerd/perforce/faq/br06.html#2 $ in the 
  70. <a href="http://public.perforce.com/public/index.html">Perforce Public Depot</a></h6>
  71. </body>
  72. </html>
# Change User Description Committed
#2 85 Laura Wingerd Correct typos and add a few clarifications. 26 years ago
#1 83 Laura Wingerd The Branching Papers. 26 years ago