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Perforce P4

Score7.3 out of 10

35 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Perforce P4?

Perforce P4 (formerly Helix Core) is the company's version control and peer code review solution. Perforce offers add-on products for code review for free, and Git support products.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Perforce P4 has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 35 ratings of Perforce P4's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Branching and Merging

    Allows users to create separate branches to work on specific features or fixes and merge them back into the main codebase when ready.

    Category average: 9.3

  • Version History

    Keeps a record of all changes made to files in the repository, allowing users to track the evolution of the code and revert to previous versions if needed.

    Category average: 9.6

  • Version Control Collaboration Tools

    Facilitates collaboration among team members by enabling them to work on the same codebase concurrently, resolve conflicts, and review each other's changes.

    Category average: 9.5

Areas for Improvement

  • Automated Testing Integration

    Integrates with continuous integration tools to automatically run tests on code changes, ensuring that new code does not introduce errors or bugs.

    Category average: 8.2

  • Branch Protection

    Prevents accidental or unauthorized changes to critical branches by restricting direct commits and enforcing code review processes before merging.

    Category average: 9.3

  • Issue Tracking Integration

    Integrates with issue tracking systems to link code changes to specific issues or tasks, providing traceability and context for changes made.

    Category average: 8.5

Reviews

What users are saying about Perforce P4.
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The standard

Incentivized
Verified User
Employee (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Perforce Helix Core to upload and download files across our team. A place where anyone on our team can access the files and at the same time know who is working on which file so they don't work on the same file and overwrite it by accidently saving over the file.

Pros

  • A place to add your organizations files across all departments
  • syncing files on your computer
  • download and uploading files is fairly easy

Cons

  • an updated UI that is more modern
  • automate the process of updating files in real time so you don't have to manually refresh to see updated files
  • could simplify the literature in the preferences to make it more understandable of what the preferences are doing

Return on Investment

  • its the gold standard for game development
  • It does take some time to understand the workings of how to think about using Perforce Helix Core

Usability

Other Software Used

GitHub

Great for Game Development, with Room for Improvements

Incentivized
Luiz WendtView profile
Software Engineer in Engineering at Timberline (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Perforce Helix Core as a source control for the development of our game. We use it for all the binaries, art assets, audio assets, and source code files for all our projects. So, almost everything. We also use Swarm to review code changes on the project. It works great with Unreal so we are also using Unreal Game Sync to ease the sync for all users.

Pros

  • Source control of binary files
  • Ease of use
  • Artist-Friendly
  • Locking of assets to avoid merge problems

Cons

  • Version control of code files
  • Branching is too dificult
  • Sometimes is very slow
  • GUI is not the greatest

Return on Investment

  • Locking assets make us have no merge problems which are harder to manage on other versions control without locking
  • Almost no need to give support to artists or non-tech folks because the operations are very straightforward
  • There's no way to do interim checkins without going to the process of creating a stream

Alternatives Considered

Git

This review is the result of anger due to the bad user experience in Perforce Helix Core P4V Desktop client

Incentivized
Pavel PetrovView profile
Infrastructure engineer in Information Technology at Amdocs (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my opinion, Perforce Helix Core is the most confusing and inefficient code management repo software that I have ever used. I often get stuck in unrecoverable mode in the desktop app, so I just create a new workspace to start from scratch. In my experience, it's contra-intuitive and hard to find details on the Internet how to resolve issues. I don't recommend using Perforce Helix Core. I think you would be much happier with any Git flavor.

Pros

  • In my experience, Wasting time
  • In my experience, Killing motivation
  • In my experience, Causing huge anger

Cons

  • In my opinion, Give up and switch to Git

Return on Investment

  • In my experience, Totally negative impact on my productivity.

Alternatives Considered

GitLab and GitHub

Other Software Used

Jenkins, Sonatype Nexus Repository OSS

Great Code Version Control

Incentivized
Kaleb-John LooView profile
Senior Firmware Engineer in Engineering at Spirent Communications (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Merge algorithm is smart and utilizing the visual interface to do merges makes them easier to digest.
  • Easy to set up on multiple platforms and architectures and is well supported on all of them.
  • Visual interface has many tools and customization options that help to optimize and personalize workflow.

Cons

  • Updating Perforce is somewhat challenging, especially on Linux Systems.
  • Sometimes settings disappear.
  • In order to customize the font settings, you must restart the visual client.
  • Perforce could display its progress in a clearer way.

Return on Investment

  • Reduce merge issues which saves a lot of time and prevents issues.
  • Easy to set up and start working for new hires or new systems, which saves time.
  • Clear visual presentation of code version metadata improves overall clarity into code base.

Alternatives Considered

Git

Other Software Used

Visual Studio IDE, Sublime Text, Atlassian Confluence

Perforce Helix -- Easy, Fast, and Rock-Solid

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • Perforce is fast.
  • It is easy to use.
  • It is easy to administer.
  • There is nothing that can beat it when it comes to flexibility.
  • Support is top-notch.

Cons

  • Perforce (the company) needs to market itself better.
  • While their Support is the best there is, account management could be better.
  • They could be better about notifying users of new features.

Return on Investment

  • Perforce Helix is fast, both to retrieve and submit files.
  • It is easy to administer, and requires very little time.
  • Perforce helps us produce better software, faster.
  • It allows us to meet compliance requirements with ease.

Alternatives Considered

Bitbucket and Apache Subversion

Usability

Other Software Used

Jira Software, Slack, Splunk Enterprise