Blog
February 7, 2020
Branching and merging are standard operations for developers and DevOps teams. This blog walks you through Perforce branching and merging in P4 (formerly Helix Core) version control.
Table of Contents
- Version Control + Branching
- Relationships Between Branches
- What Is Perforce Branching? Perforce Streams
- What Makes Perforce Branching Different
- Why You Need Perforce Streams
- Perforce Branching: Streams 101
- Perforce Branching With Streams
Version Control + Branching
Version control systems (VCS) help manage changes over time. Branching is what allows developers to make those changes without impacting other users. Then their changes can be merged back into the codebase.
But if you have thousands of developers, branching and merging changes gets complicated, fast. This is because most VCS –– like SVN and ClearCase –– do not systematically keep track of the relationships between branches. This requires development teams to track these relationships manually.
Relationships Between Branches
Tracking is often done using a flowchart stored on a team wiki or on a white board with a “do not erase” sign plastered next to it. It also often requires complex scripting on top of the VCS. This can be costly to set up and usually requires a team of administrators to maintain.
If (and when) a branch is merged back in the wrong place, or merge conflicts are not properly resolved, builds can break. This causes developers to spend time troubleshooting issues, which decreases velocity and can cause release delays.
What Is Perforce Branching? Perforce Streams
All version control systems have branching. But in P4 we have Perforce Streams. Streams offers built-in support for complex branching and merging operations. Teams can manage thousands of codelines and visually track relationships between codelines to allow for stress-free merging.
[VIDEO] See Streams In Action >>
What Makes Perforce Branching Different
There are several advantages to using Streams. You can:
- Create and visually show the dependencies between branches.
- Systematically enforce best practices (i.e., merge down, copy up) around branching and merging.
- Switch between codelines fast.
- Set up developer workspaces automatically upon branch creation.
Why You Need Perforce Streams
Streams encourages the merge early, merge often principle by visually showing when a merge should happen. This avoids large, costly merge conflicts at the end of projects that can often break builds and delay releases. The result is increased velocity and more time spent on new feature development.
Perforce Branching: Streams 101
Streams makes your developers –– and admins –– lives easier. Learn how.
You Can Develop Your Way
Streams adapts to how your team works. You can set it up to match your branching strategy –– e.g., by team, feature, component, or stage of development. It creates a flexible system that supports how you build your projects. You can use Streams if you use a monolith, microservices, or component based development architecture.
This is because it’s easy to configure Streams to work on components and modules. And Streams automatically keeps track of your dependencies. This allows you to more easily test all the code together, ensuring that you ship high-quality code on time.
You Can Visualize Changes
When changes are available in a related codeline, developers can quickly see what is happening in the Stream Graph. Using the colored arrows, they know what streams are dependent on their changes. And they can tell when they need to merge down new changes from other team members.
Get a Tiny Tutorial of Perforce Streams >>
You Can Easily Investigate File History
P4 offers features that allow you to easily see a file’s branching history. Using the Revision Graph, you can see the file integration history. This history includes when a file is:
- Added
- Branched
- Edited
- Merged
- Copied
- Deleted
Using this feature allows you to quickly and easily view the branching structure to see how the file has evolved. That means if there is a merge conflict, you can go back in and see what happened, and when.
You can also use the Time-lapse View to view the branch history of a given file. This gives you an alternative view of how a file has evolved over time. It helps answer questions like, “when was this line of code introduced and by whom?”
You Can Use Your Favorite Tools
Streams functionality is available in P4 Visual Client (P4V), as well as directly from the P4 Command-Line Client (P4). These tools are both supported on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Streams also works with popular IDEs ––like Visual Studio, Eclipse, and more –– integration tools, and APIs. Now your admins can spend less time onboarding developers and monitoring branch/merge scripts, and start automating more.
Perforce Branching With Streams
Perforce Streams is just one of the many features P4 provides to help accelerate development.
P4 can handle everything –– thousands of users, millions of daily transactions, and terabytes of data. And as your teams and projects grow, P4 can deliver files and feedback around the globe without a WAN wait.
Admins less time setting up and maintaining branching workflows. Developers can get the files they need, fast.
Plus, P4 is free for 5 users.