Customer Reviews

Practical Perforce

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
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2 star:		(1)
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I love Perforce, but I'm not a big fan of their documentation. What little material they have on proper use of Perforce is terse and mainly impenetrable. This book really digs into how to manage branches and shows how to use Perforce in real world situations, like freezing branches, then applying patches. That stuff can be tough and mistakes are costly. That's why I say that this is the book that will save your ass.

While Perforce is a very flexible SCM system that allows you to run your projects in pretty much any conceivable configuration, it can be daunting deciding on which to use. This book provides a great practical way to setup and use Perforce. In particular, the last section contains specific examples on setting up branches and how to safely integrate between them. If you use Perforce, keep this book handy.

This is an excellent book on Perforce but is more than that since it contains some very useful ideas on branching and the "Flow of Change" which apply to all SCM tools. Laura writes very clearly and in an engaging style.

It is particularly good on explaining lots of details of how to do branching and merging which is an area a lot of people initially have trouble with. It goes on to identify a variety of scenarios and how to address them that will be invaluable to many people.

I have been working with Perforce since 1997 and provide consultancy and training in the tool and still learnt a number of new things from this book. In particular I will be "borrowing" some of the ways of explaining that Laura uses!

My only quibble is the focus on the use of the command line which might put some people off. Don't let it - if you use Perforce you need this book!

The book provides a thorough, yet highly readable education on how to use Perforce effectively. The writing style is easy to follow, the book is well edited and clearly laid out, and the examples are well-chosen and meaningful.

One thing I found particularly nice about this book is that it appeals both to the Perforce expert, as well as to the Perforce beginner. Experts will appreciate the clear explanation of the underlying details, while more casual users will find numerous hints, tips, and recipes that they can put to use immediately.

I think this book is even useful to non-Perforce users, specifically for the chapters which discuss some of the underlying philosophy of source code control and configuration management, such as the mainline model, the flow of change, and the ideas on how to integrate source code control into your overall software development organization.

'Practical Perforce' by Laura Wingerd is a nice companion manual for all Perforce administrators. For anyone that doesn't know what Perforce is, in short it is a SCM (Source Control Management) tool much like CVS, Visual Sourcesafe, Rational Clearcase, Accurev, etc). Like most SCM software out there, documentation is sparse and can be confusing at time for any release engineer to navigate through, so this is a welcome text to have by your side.

WARNING: If you are looking to LEARN Perforce, this is not the book for you. This book assumes that you have some experience with this application and its uses. Buyer beware if you pick this book up as a straight teaching tool as it would probably be more beneficial to get up to speed via a fellow engineer before you open up this text. This doesn't take away from this nice book at all, it's just clarification re: the use of it.

**** RECOMMENDED

Practical Perforce is an excellent introductory to intermediate text for those who might use the Perforce application. It progresses from the very basic introduction all the way to Web Content with numerous steps in between. Texts of this type and for this program are difficult to come by and this book is excellent in that it covers the entire spectrum of Perforce. I use Perforce daily in the course of my work and I found this book an excellent reference to keep me sharp. I highly recommend this text to anyone that uses Perforce.

Or anyone else who has any input into their company's software control decisions. (Or pretty much anyone using Perforce, or thinking about using Perforce, etc.)

Unlike some I've found the standard documentation (and online knowledge base) easy to work with and understand, but like most I've longed for more examples and theory. This book provides those and more. If you're an admin, buy an extra copy because your serious users will want to borrow it (my copy is "out there" somewhere even as I type).

I found this book a better resource for learning Perforce over the online documentation. It offers a good variety of source management situations and how to use Perforce in them.

This book was better than I expected, because it not only explains how to use Perforce, but it covers handling branches in general using the "Tofu model" of softer to firmer codelines. This makes the book worthwhile even if you're not using a different CMS system, just as a way to think about using code branches to manage product releases, new feature development, and bug fixes all at the same time.

One area that was a bit weak is that the majority of the book is geared towards development of shrinkwrap-style software with discrete release points, and only a final short chapter is dedicated to the continuous release style used by web-based products, seeming like an afterthought.

But overall I would highly recommend this book to anyone using Perforce in software development of any kind.

As the title suggests, this is a how-to guide for doing Software Configuration Management with Perforce, but there's more. In addition to describing how the various commands work, this book helps you understand how to structure your version control system to help your team be more effective. For example, this book describes not only how to create branches, but why, and what policy to have on the branch. The Channeling the Flow of Change chapter is a great introduction to change management concepts in general, and the "Tofu Scale" is a great metaphor for structuring codelines. In addition, the clear writing style makes somewhat tricky concepts very accessible.

Buy this book if you are using Perforce as your SCM solution, or even if you are evaluating multiple solutions, and Perforce is a candidate, as this book will help you understand how to structure your environment for effective development, regardless of your tool. This is an excellent companion to Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration for Perforce users.