All our files are in Perforce and I would like to do “local” revisions, that sit between the ones that are submitted to perforce.
I have already looked at doing multiple local revision with Perforce shelving, but that seems to create an abundance of pending change lists. Doing my own Perforce branch is out of the question as these are tightly managed from “above”
So I guess I’m looking for a version control program that’s easy to install, works well with binary files and that will play nice alongside with Perforce, that I can use for this.
Something that plays nice with Python would be nice.
Why don’t you want to check multiple revisions into Perforce? That is what it’s intended usage is.
I’ve managed our Perforce server for probably 10 years, and ENCOURAGE our artists to have dozens of revisions of a single file checked into Perforce in addition to 100% of their working files, reference materials, etc.
“Saving” your work by checking into Perforce on a frequent basis is a good thing.
That aside, you can install a local Perforce server. It’s free for up to 2 users.
You cannot really replicate a DVCS with Perforce. They are conceptually different- Perforce can add features like shelving, but it is too different. But AFAIK both Mercurial and Git won’t do well with large binary files like you’d need.
Adding all those files could bring not-insignificant hardware costs. You’ll have to weigh the cost and benefit. But trying to add yet another version control system (or having artists maintain local p4 servers) is just going to add complexity that is probably going to be the worst option.
[QUOTE=sl4ppy;11091]Why don’t you want to check multiple revisions into Perforce? That is what it’s intended usage is.[/QUOTE]
Don’t get me wrong, I love having revision control and wouldn’t dream of living without it!
The point is that at our studio you are not really expected to check in a “broken” scene. But as a part of my own little workflow, I need the freedom to do all manner of crazy things, that’ll break conventions, might cause the scene not to export etc.
The best scenario would be something that stored these “local revisions” off of my machine, in case of failure. That’s why I though of revision control. Though if I store it on my own machine, I agree I might as well make a simple save revision tool.
I wish doing multiple shelves of files in Perforce did not require a change list for each. Your pending change list view becomes mighty cluttered
Yeah, I would also suggest just doing a Perforce branch of your own. If you for some reason aren’t allowed to do branches, go scream at somebody.
I’ve done some larger art related format upgrade/conversions exactly this way (and found out that once you have say over 10k files in a single changelist, you really want to use the command line instead of P4V/P4Win).
You can even just branch a very small subset of your depot if your folder structures are set up in a way to do that easily.
I think every p4 branch has to be part of and thought into sprints/milestones and resources and time need to be set aside for integration and such. That what I think it’s about anyway, but I’m not completely sure.
Anyway, I found a ‘users’ depot that everyone should have access too and that I should be able to spam.