If you’ve ever been involved in a programming project that required many developers to work together without the aid of a source code control system, you’ve probably experienced the joy of having someone overwrite some part of the code you were working on. If this has ever happened to you, you probably now refuse to write code without a source code control package and a loaded pistol by your side. Perforce is an excellent example of the former; for the latter, see the discussion of the mod_ auth_smith_and_wesson PAM module elsewhere in this issue.
Controlling Code
Source code control systems (SCCS) keep track of changes to a code base, preventing other developers from stepping all over your code. Through “merging,” SCCS can also make it relatively easy to blend together multiple changes made to a code base by multiple people without losing anyone’s contributions.
Perforce is a client/server source code control system that runs on a large number of platforms. The server typically is where the code store “lives.” Clients typically modify only local copies “checked out” from the server. Perforce provides Graphical User Interface (GUI) clients for operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS, and offers an excellent browser-based client called p4web for all other platforms (including Linux).
Once you get it working, Perforce is a great piece of software. Unfortunately, that can take a while. The documentation is well-written but hides some easy getting-started instructions in obscure places (such as within…
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