This review is the result of anger due to the bad user experience in Perforce Helix Core P4V Desktop client
In my opinion, Perforce Helix Core is the most confusing and inefficient code management repo software that I have ever used. I often get …
Overview
What is Perforce Helix Core?
Multinational company Perforce, headquartered in Alameda, California offers a version control and peer code review solution. Perforce version control is built around Helix Core with add-on products for code review (Helix Swarm) for free, and add Git support products (Helix4Git…
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What is Perforce Helix Core?
Multinational company Perforce, headquartered in Alameda, California offers a version control and peer code review solution. Perforce version control is built around Helix Core with add-on products for code review (Helix Swarm) for free, and add Git support products (Helix4Git and Helix TeamHub).…
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- Integrations
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Perforce Helix Core?
Perforce Helix Core is a version control system for teams who need to accelerate innovation at scale. It is used to store and track changes to digital assets, from source code to binary to IPs, and connects teams.
Perforce Helix Core Integrations
- Unreal Engine
- Unity
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- Jira Software
- Jenkins
- Assembla
- IntelliJ IDEA
- Slack
- Adobe PhotoShop
- Komodo IDE
- Amazon Open 3D Engine (Lumberyard)
- Apache Maven
- Bamboo
- Autodesk 3ds Max
- Autodesk Maya
- CRYENGINE
- DBmaestro Database DevOps Platform
- Backtrace, from Sauce Labs
- Eclipse
- ftrack
- GitHub
- Google Cloud Platform
- Gradle Build Tool (Open Source)
- Hansoft
- Helix ALM
- IBM Aspera on Cloud
Perforce Helix Core Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Multinational company Perforce, headquartered in Alameda, California offers a version control and peer code review solution. Perforce version control is built around Helix Core with add-on products for code review (Helix Swarm) for free, and add Git support products (Helix4Git and Helix TeamHub). The original Perforce SCM solution was expanded via the Surround SCM, a software configuration management application which was developed by Seapine Software and now owned by Perforce since that company's acquisition of Seapine in October 2016. Perforce integrated the software with its Helix ALM product. Surround SCM integrates with Perforce's Helix ALM to help manage code, along with requirements, tests, and issues.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.6.
The most common users of Perforce Helix Core are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
Users have adopted various revision control packages like Perforce, Git, and SVN to develop and store data independently. Perforce serves as the backbone of version control for builds, ensuring everyone has the latest content and code. It is easy to get started with Perforce, allowing users to pull the files they want. However, it can be challenging to perform more complex tasks like branching and integrating. Nevertheless, Perforce supports a rich GUI for most tasks and a command-line interface for automated or advanced tasks, making it suitable for users with varying technical proficiency.
Perforce is accessible globally and externally to product licensees, supporting all major features like branching, shelving, and p4web. The visual client of Perforce is user-friendly, presenting the directory structure conveniently and consistently across platforms. Its merge optimization feature is highly useful for day-to-day operations, providing efficient code merging capabilities. This makes Perforce ideal for agile development, big data services, and marketing materials across thousands of automotive dealerships.
Moreover, Perforce is scalable and suitable for small to enterprise-level projects. It integrates well within a .Net environment and is leveraged by several departments to track changes in software, documentation, and assets, providing quick access to change history and approvals. In industries like healthcare, Perforce Helix Core serves as the source control management system of choice for corporate products, internal applications, custom code, and configurations. Beyond version control purposes, Perforce is also used for collaboration and sharing software between independent developer groups within and across different lab sites. In addition to its version control capabilities, Perforce ensures the integrity of code bases by providing backup and revision control features.
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(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
November 11, 2015
Perforce - Scalable Enterprise Version Control
As the primary tool for version control across our organization, Perforce provides an enterprise level solution for the management of our various products and software branches, among other things. Perforce branching, action triggers, locking, and other features make it ideal for the type of work historically done by CDK Global (formerly ADP Dealer Services). It supports the production of highly scalable big data services, agile development of websites and other marketing materials spanning thousands of automotive dealerships, and much more.
- The branching mechanisms in Perforce allow for an enormous codebase to be duplicated into release versions weekly with little impact upon things such as the speed of queries against the version control.
- Action triggers permit such things as automated builds of software versions, dynamic messaging when issues are identified either within or prior to a build process, and much more.
- Locking provides the ability to prevent modifications of stable, tested versions in order to ensure validity when they are released.
- As new tools like Git enter the market, enterprise solutions like Perforce are often seen as rigid and overly complex.
- Occasionally, the branching system in Perforce seems to fail to retain proper branching history, making it difficult to track the original source of changes if they were initiated across multiple branching operations.
- When a change made has inadvertently caused side effects, it can be necessary to back out code changes. This process is difficult to do when the changes needing back-out are spread across multiple changelists for the same set of files. It can be even more difficult if any of those changelists contain files that should not be backed out, though this latter point partly indicates a flaw in the developer's process.
- In the case of CDK Global, Perforce has done an excellent job of maintaining service levels for clients. This is not in terms of customer service, as much as the operational stability of the marketing materials (websites, services, etc) that are in place as a result of the assets held in Perforce version control.
- Apache Subversion,Git
Subversion
Having a centralized repository in this case would vastly slow down the request/response cycle for repository access, whereas a replicated system like Git keeps the process fast until the developer needs to push to or pull from the origin. Each client also can define its own origin in Git, such that a daisy chain from a given individual to a source of record (or multiple as a form of fallback mechanism) can vastly improve efficiency.
- missing many of the features that Perforce provides, but
- a much more lightweight versioning system
- with fewer commands, this has a lower barrier to entry
- like Perforce, has a single, centralized database master
- similarly has a more limited feature set
- excels in the realm of rapidly creating and merging feature branches
- has a concept of origins, but each client has its own full-fledged repository
Having a centralized repository in this case would vastly slow down the request/response cycle for repository access, whereas a replicated system like Git keeps the process fast until the developer needs to push to or pull from the origin. Each client also can define its own origin in Git, such that a daisy chain from a given individual to a source of record (or multiple as a form of fallback mechanism) can vastly improve efficiency.
7
Perforce is the source control management system of choice for our entire organization. We use it to safely version content of all kinds; code, scripts, art, and documentation. It is shared globally across our organization and accessible externally to our product licensees. It has been used for every product we've shipped as well as all our active projects. We make use of all the major features like branching and shelving as well as p4web.
- Perforce handles code exceptionally fast and provides a deep toolset. The ability to quickly see differences via the revision history, revision graph, and time lapse view are invaluable for tracing differences over time and across branches/integrations.
- Perforce does a decent job of maintaining our security policies across different areas of code. We can block access to various branches and directory structures using the various administration tools available. This ensures the right people have the right access at the right time. We can also temporarily disable check in access and lock down a source tree when necessary.
- The P4 client, P4V, is a clean and intuitive tool. There are multiple ways of viewing the depot with powerful search commands and easy access to the more advanced P4 concepts all from within the GUI. Shelving, merging, integrating, and syncing are all easy to do.
- P4V, in the interest of stability, seems to have taken a few steps back in its ability to perform asynchronous operations. Once upon a time I was able to sync and perform resolves on code at the same time and now it seems to wait for all operations and does everything much more serially.
- P4VS, the integration with Microsoft Visual Studio, is still fairly new to the product suite. We have very complicated VS projects and it can take some time for P4VS to sync its status with the P4 server. Additionally, there are still a few rough edges in its features, such as the limited history dialog and some crash/instability issues when an automated checkout of file about to be edited doesn't get a response from the server quickly. It is still good to see that they wrote their own tool rather than stick with the antiquated SCC APIs offered by Microsoft.
- If I was being nit picky, I would say it would be nice for P4 to consider integrating more "content" versioning tools for various binary formats. There is plenty "non text" content to be version controlled, and to be able to diff versions right inside P4 would be invaluable.
- Working across multiple workspaces on the same machine can sometimes be difficult when various P4 products are used at the same time (say P4VS, P4V, P4EXP). It would be nice if workspace switching, the P4 env variables, and the various P4.ini settings were easier to reconcile and visualize from within the various client tools.
- Some really advanced/complicated client specs (using ... and * for example) can slow down integrating and other P4V operations.
- While I haven't experienced this directly, it is my understanding that syncing large data across large distances can be slow and that the various proxy tools could use improvement. I do know that various switches/options have been exposed to make various tasks require less data transfer to the client to improve this.
- Perforce helps our licensees and development teams get access to our code base anywhere in the world.
- Our developers have never had to worry about the reliability of our source depot and know that if its checked in, the data is safe.
300
All business functions use it in one form or another. Artists, Designers, Programmers all use it. Some documentation is stored there as well for various business functions.
August 24, 2014
It works, but not great.
Perforce was used as version control software in my entire organization. Engineers used it to manage code.
- Great command line support.
- Great compare text files tool.
- Have to check out code before modifying, preventing from accidentally modification.
- UI tool is not intuitive.
- Hard to manage multiple branches.
- Improve developer efficiency.
- Limited functionalities.
- Git,svn
Perforce is similar to SVN but the SVN has better command line support. Git surpasses both SVN and Perforce because of its flexibility with multiple branches and code review.
August 22, 2014
Perforce - A full-featured ecosystem
Being a large company that spans many continents, and having merged with other companies in the past, we have many different groups who've decided on how they develop and store data all on their own. Because of these seemingly independent choices, we've adopted the use of various revision control packages, including Perforce, as well as the popular host of other options, such as Git and SVN. Each package brings advantages as well as hindrances, from the very easy to get start but not as well supported nor portable SVN, to the very portable yet hard to work with and get going Git; and finally Perforce, a sort of in-between: easy to get started and pull the files you want, yet difficult to perform more complicated tasks such as branching and integrating. Supporting a rich GUI for most tasks, as well as a command-line interface for automated or more complicated tasks, Perforce can find favor with users of varying need and technical proficiency.
- Perforce has a feature rich GUI making it somewhat easy to find files, and historical changes, as well as utility features to better visualize changes over time.
- The concept of change lists, client specs, and branches is unique to a large extent, and adds value in high customization for each user.
- Perforce is well supported, and has plenty of information on use both officially, and through other user experience as documented on the web.
- Perforce tends to feel backwards in how it approaches certain tasks, like branching and integrating - even once you figure out how it wants you to perform these tasks, you will likely forget when it comes around to the next time you need to do them again.
- Perforce has a higher price tag, comparatively.
- Perforce make some tasks very easy, and yet other tasks very difficult - it doesn't always seem to have found its target user's proficiency.
- Client specs allow high customization in what your view of the repo looks like.
- Integrating and branching is very difficult. I've been one of the main people in performing this task as it takes a great deal of technical proficiency, and I seem to have to re-learn how to perform these tasks every time.
- Perforce feels like a ecosystem, a complete solution. It requires you to learn its speak, and order of operation, however, it comes with solutions for every possible task you'd need to perform, and is highly script-able when you want to further customize.
- SVN,GIT
Perforce has more features than SVN. However even the simpler tasks in SVN require a degree more technical aptitude with Perforce. Git offers most of the same features, however most of these are only really supported via the command-line in Git, where as most tasks can be performed through Perforce's GUI. Perforce is much more expensive than the other two.
- Perforce is easy to install, and in the case you are not creating complicated client specs, easy to get the files you need.
- Branching and integration of other branches is extremely complicated, and feels like it moves backwards.
- The software, GUI and commandline interface, are feature rich and relatively straightforward to use, as long as you know what you are trying to use.
- Branching
- Re-integrating
- Complicated client specs
No
August 15, 2014
Perforce - my thoughts
It's the backbone of our version control for our builds. It's used by everyone in the organization to keep current. It mskes sure everyone has the latest content and code.
- Version control
- Conflict mitigation
- Proxy server access
- Merging conflicts is sometimes difficult.
- New users often have trouble with setup.
- UI is sometimes vague.
- Increased employee efficiency.
- Faster iteration times.
- Excellent return on investment.
I've worked with Alienbrain and I like Perforce much better with the streamlined interface. Alienbrain seems a little bloated.