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GIT-P4(1) Git Manual GIT-P4(1)
git-p4 - Import from and submit to Perforce repositories
git p4 clone [<sync-options>] [<clone-options>] <p4-depot-path>...
git p4 sync [<sync-options>] [<p4-depot-path>...]
git p4 rebase
git p4 submit [<submit-options>] [<master-branch-name>]
This command provides a way to interact with p4 repositories
using Git.
Create a new Git repository from an existing p4 repository using
git p4 clone, giving it one or more p4 depot paths. Incorporate
new commits from p4 changes with git p4 sync. The sync command is
also used to include new branches from other p4 depot paths.
Submit Git changes back to p4 using git p4 submit. The command
git p4 rebase does a sync plus rebases the current branch onto
the updated p4 remote branch.
• Clone a repository:
$ git p4 clone //depot/path/project
• Do some work in the newly created Git repository:
$ cd project
$ vi foo.h
$ git commit -a -m "edited foo.h"
• Update the Git repository with recent changes from p4,
rebasing your work on top:
$ git p4 rebase
• Submit your commits back to p4:
$ git p4 submit
Clone
Generally, git p4 clone is used to create a new Git directory
from an existing p4 repository:
$ git p4 clone //depot/path/project
This:
1. Creates an empty Git repository in a subdirectory called
project.
2. Imports the full contents of the head revision from the given
p4 depot path into a single commit in the Git branch
refs/remotes/p4/master.
3. Creates a local branch, master from this remote and checks it
out.
To reproduce the entire p4 history in Git, use the @all modifier
on the depot path:
$ git p4 clone //depot/path/project@all
Sync
As development continues in the p4 repository, those changes can
be included in the Git repository using:
$ git p4 sync
This command finds new changes in p4 and imports them as Git
commits.
P4 repositories can be added to an existing Git repository using
git p4 sync too:
$ mkdir repo-git
$ cd repo-git
$ git init
$ git p4 sync //path/in/your/perforce/depot
This imports the specified depot into refs/remotes/p4/master in
an existing Git repository. The --branch option can be used to
specify a different branch to be used for the p4 content.
If a Git repository includes branches refs/remotes/origin/p4,
these will be fetched and consulted first during a git p4 sync.
Since importing directly from p4 is considerably slower than
pulling changes from a Git remote, this can be useful in a
multi-developer environment.
If there are multiple branches, doing git p4 sync will
automatically use the "BRANCH DETECTION" algorithm to try to
partition new changes into the right branch. This can be
overridden with the --branch option to specify just a single
branch to update.
Rebase
A common working pattern is to fetch the latest changes from the
p4 depot and merge them with local uncommitted changes. Often,
the p4 repository is the ultimate location for all code, thus a
rebase workflow makes sense. This command does git p4 sync
followed by git rebase to move local commits on top of updated p4
changes.
$ git p4 rebase
Submit
Submitting changes from a Git repository back to the p4
repository requires a separate p4 client workspace. This should
be specified using the P4CLIENT environment variable or the Git
configuration variable git-p4.client. The p4 client must exist,
but the client root will be created and populated if it does not
already exist.
To submit all changes that are in the current Git branch but not
in the p4/master branch, use:
$ git p4 submit
To specify a branch other than the current one, use:
$ git p4 submit topicbranch
To specify a single commit or a range of commits, use:
$ git p4 submit --commit <sha1>
$ git p4 submit --commit <sha1..sha1>
The upstream reference is generally refs/remotes/p4/master, but
can be overridden using the --origin= command-line option.
The p4 changes will be created as the user invoking git p4
submit. The --preserve-user option will cause ownership to be
modified according to the author of the Git commit. This option
requires admin privileges in p4, which can be granted using p4
protect.
To shelve changes instead of submitting, use --shelve and
--update-shelve:
$ git p4 submit --shelve
$ git p4 submit --update-shelve 1234 --update-shelve 2345
Unshelve
Unshelving will take a shelved P4 changelist, and produce the
equivalent git commit in the branch
refs/remotes/p4-unshelved/<changelist>.
The git commit is created relative to the current origin revision
(HEAD by default). A parent commit is created based on the
origin, and then the unshelve commit is created based on that.
The origin revision can be changed with the "--origin" option.
If the target branch in refs/remotes/p4-unshelved already exists,
the old one will be renamed.
$ git p4 sync
$ git p4 unshelve 12345
$ git show p4-unshelved/12345
<submit more changes via p4 to the same files>
$ git p4 unshelve 12345
<refuses to unshelve until git is in sync with p4 again>
General options
All commands except clone accept these options.
--git-dir <dir>
Set the GIT_DIR environment variable. See git(1).
-v, --verbose
Provide more progress information.
Sync options
These options can be used in the initial clone as well as in
subsequent sync operations.
--branch <ref>
Import changes into <ref> instead of refs/remotes/p4/master.
If <ref> starts with refs/, it is used as is. Otherwise, if
it does not start with p4/, that prefix is added.
By default a <ref> not starting with refs/ is treated as the
name of a remote-tracking branch (under refs/remotes/). This
behavior can be modified using the --import-local option.
The default <ref> is "master".
This example imports a new remote "p4/proj2" into an existing
Git repository:
$ git init
$ git p4 sync --branch=refs/remotes/p4/proj2 //depot/proj2
--detect-branches
Use the branch detection algorithm to find new paths in p4.
It is documented below in "BRANCH DETECTION".
--changesfile <file>
Import exactly the p4 change numbers listed in file, one per
line. Normally, git p4 inspects the current p4 repository
state and detects the changes it should import.
--silent
Do not print any progress information.
--detect-labels
Query p4 for labels associated with the depot paths, and add
them as tags in Git. Limited usefulness as only imports
labels associated with new changelists. Deprecated.
--import-labels
Import labels from p4 into Git.
--import-local
By default, p4 branches are stored in refs/remotes/p4/, where
they will be treated as remote-tracking branches by
git-branch(1) and other commands. This option instead puts p4
branches in refs/heads/p4/. Note that future sync operations
must specify --import-local as well so that they can find the
p4 branches in refs/heads.
--max-changes <n>
Import at most n changes, rather than the entire range of
changes included in the given revision specifier. A typical
usage would be use @all as the revision specifier, but then
to use --max-changes 1000 to import only the last 1000
revisions rather than the entire revision history.
--changes-block-size <n>
The internal block size to use when converting a revision
specifier such as @all into a list of specific change
numbers. Instead of using a single call to p4 changes to find
the full list of changes for the conversion, there are a
sequence of calls to p4 changes -m, each of which requests
one block of changes of the given size. The default block
size is 500, which should usually be suitable.
--keep-path
The mapping of file names from the p4 depot path to Git, by
default, involves removing the entire depot path. With this
option, the full p4 depot path is retained in Git. For
example, path //depot/main/foo/bar.c, when imported from
//depot/main/, becomes foo/bar.c. With --keep-path, the Git
path is instead depot/main/foo/bar.c.
--use-client-spec
Use a client spec to find the list of interesting files in
p4. See the "CLIENT SPEC" section below.
-/ <path>
Exclude selected depot paths when cloning or syncing.
Clone options
These options can be used in an initial clone, along with the
sync options described above.
--destination <directory>
Where to create the Git repository. If not provided, the last
component in the p4 depot path is used to create a new
directory.
--bare
Perform a bare clone. See git-clone(1).
Submit options
These options can be used to modify git p4 submit behavior.
--origin <commit>
Upstream location from which commits are identified to submit
to p4. By default, this is the most recent p4 commit
reachable from HEAD.
-M
Detect renames. See git-diff(1). Renames will be represented
in p4 using explicit move operations. There is no
corresponding option to detect copies, but there are
variables for both moves and copies.
--preserve-user
Re-author p4 changes before submitting to p4. This option
requires p4 admin privileges.
--export-labels
Export tags from Git as p4 labels. Tags found in Git are
applied to the perforce working directory.
-n, --dry-run
Show just what commits would be submitted to p4; do not
change state in Git or p4.
--prepare-p4-only
Apply a commit to the p4 workspace, opening, adding and
deleting files in p4 as for a normal submit operation. Do not
issue the final "p4 submit", but instead print a message
about how to submit manually or revert. This option always
stops after the first (oldest) commit. Git tags are not
exported to p4.
--shelve
Instead of submitting create a series of shelved changelists.
After creating each shelve, the relevant files are
reverted/deleted. If you have multiple commits pending
multiple shelves will be created.
--update-shelve CHANGELIST
Update an existing shelved changelist with this commit.
Implies --shelve. Repeat for multiple shelved changelists.
--conflict=(ask|skip|quit)
Conflicts can occur when applying a commit to p4. When this
happens, the default behavior ("ask") is to prompt whether to
skip this commit and continue, or quit. This option can be
used to bypass the prompt, causing conflicting commits to be
automatically skipped, or to quit trying to apply commits,
without prompting.
--branch <branch>
After submitting, sync this named branch instead of the
default p4/master. See the "Sync options" section above for
more information.
--commit (<sha1>|<sha1>..<sha1>)
Submit only the specified commit or range of commits, instead
of the full list of changes that are in the current Git
branch.
--disable-rebase
Disable the automatic rebase after all commits have been
successfully submitted. Can also be set with
git-p4.disableRebase.
--disable-p4sync
Disable the automatic sync of p4/master from Perforce after
commits have been submitted. Implies --disable-rebase. Can
also be set with git-p4.disableP4Sync. Sync with
origin/master still goes ahead if possible.
p4-pre-submit
The p4-pre-submit hook is executed if it exists and is
executable. The hook takes no parameters and nothing from
standard input. Exiting with non-zero status from this script
prevents git-p4 submit from launching. It can be bypassed with
the --no-verify command line option.
One usage scenario is to run unit tests in the hook.
p4-prepare-changelist
The p4-prepare-changelist hook is executed right after preparing
the default changelist message and before the editor is started.
It takes one parameter, the name of the file that contains the
changelist text. Exiting with a non-zero status from the script
will abort the process.
The purpose of the hook is to edit the message file in place, and
it is not suppressed by the --no-verify option. This hook is
called even if --prepare-p4-only is set.
p4-changelist
The p4-changelist hook is executed after the changelist message
has been edited by the user. It can be bypassed with the
--no-verify option. It takes a single parameter, the name of the
file that holds the proposed changelist text. Exiting with a
non-zero status causes the command to abort.
The hook is allowed to edit the changelist file and can be used
to normalize the text into some project standard format. It can
also be used to refuse the Submit after inspect the message file.
p4-post-changelist
The p4-post-changelist hook is invoked after the submit has
successfully occurred in P4. It takes no parameters and is meant
primarily for notification and cannot affect the outcome of the
git p4 submit action.
Rebase options
These options can be used to modify git p4 rebase behavior.
--import-labels
Import p4 labels.
Unshelve options
--origin
Sets the git refspec against which the shelved P4 changelist
is compared. Defaults to p4/master.
The p4 depot path argument to git p4 sync and git p4 clone can be
one or more space-separated p4 depot paths, with an optional p4
revision specifier on the end:
"//depot/my/project"
Import one commit with all files in the #head change under
that tree.
"//depot/my/project@all"
Import one commit for each change in the history of that
depot path.
"//depot/my/project@1,6"
Import only changes 1 through 6.
"//depot/proj1@all //depot/proj2@all"
Import all changes from both named depot paths into a single
repository. Only files below these directories are included.
There is not a subdirectory in Git for each "proj1" and
"proj2". You must use the --destination option when
specifying more than one depot path. The revision specifier
must be specified identically on each depot path. If there
are files in the depot paths with the same name, the path
with the most recently updated version of the file is the one
that appears in Git.
See p4 help revisions for the full syntax of p4 revision
specifiers.
The p4 client specification is maintained with the p4 client
command and contains among other fields, a View that specifies
how the depot is mapped into the client repository. The clone and
sync commands can consult the client spec when given the
--use-client-spec option or when the useClientSpec variable is
true. After git p4 clone, the useClientSpec variable is
automatically set in the repository configuration file. This
allows future git p4 submit commands to work properly; the submit
command looks only at the variable and does not have a
command-line option.
The full syntax for a p4 view is documented in p4 help views. git
p4 knows only a subset of the view syntax. It understands
multi-line mappings, overlays with +, exclusions with - and
double-quotes around whitespace. Of the possible wildcards, git
p4 only handles ..., and only when it is at the end of the path.
git p4 will complain if it encounters an unhandled wildcard.
Bugs in the implementation of overlap mappings exist. If multiple
depot paths map through overlays to the same location in the
repository, git p4 can choose the wrong one. This is hard to
solve without dedicating a client spec just for git p4.
The name of the client can be given to git p4 in multiple ways.
The variable git-p4.client takes precedence if it exists.
Otherwise, normal p4 mechanisms of determining the client are
used: environment variable P4CLIENT, a file referenced by
P4CONFIG, or the local host name.
P4 does not have the same concept of a branch as Git. Instead, p4
organizes its content as a directory tree, where by convention
different logical branches are in different locations in the
tree. The p4 branch command is used to maintain mappings between
different areas in the tree, and indicate related content. git p4
can use these mappings to determine branch relationships.
If you have a repository where all the branches of interest exist
as subdirectories of a single depot path, you can use
--detect-branches when cloning or syncing to have git p4
automatically find subdirectories in p4, and to generate these as
branches in Git.
For example, if the P4 repository structure is:
//depot/main/...
//depot/branch1/...
And "p4 branch -o branch1" shows a View line that looks like:
//depot/main/... //depot/branch1/...
Then this git p4 clone command:
git p4 clone --detect-branches //depot@all
produces a separate branch in refs/remotes/p4/ for //depot/main,
called master, and one for //depot/branch1 called depot/branch1.
However, it is not necessary to create branches in p4 to be able
to use them like branches. Because it is difficult to infer
branch relationships automatically, a Git configuration setting
git-p4.branchList can be used to explicitly identify branch
relationships. It is a list of "source:destination" pairs, like a
simple p4 branch specification, where the "source" and
"destination" are the path elements in the p4 repository. The
example above relied on the presence of the p4 branch. Without p4
branches, the same result will occur with:
git init depot
cd depot
git config git-p4.branchList main:branch1
git p4 clone --detect-branches //depot@all .
The fast-import mechanism used by git p4 creates one pack file
for each invocation of git p4 sync. Normally, Git garbage
compression (git-gc(1)) automatically compresses these to fewer
pack files, but explicit invocation of git repack -adf may
improve performance.
The following config settings can be used to modify git p4
behavior. They all are in the git-p4 section.
General variables
git-p4.user
User specified as an option to all p4 commands, with -u
<user>. The environment variable P4USER can be used instead.
git-p4.password
Password specified as an option to all p4 commands, with -P
<password>. The environment variable P4PASS can be used
instead.
git-p4.port
Port specified as an option to all p4 commands, with -p
<port>. The environment variable P4PORT can be used instead.
git-p4.host
Host specified as an option to all p4 commands, with -h
<host>. The environment variable P4HOST can be used instead.
git-p4.client
Client specified as an option to all p4 commands, with -c
<client>, including the client spec.
git-p4.retries
Specifies the number of times to retry a p4 command (notably,
p4 sync) if the network times out. The default value is 3.
Set the value to 0 to disable retries or if your p4 version
does not support retries (pre 2012.2).
Clone and sync variables
git-p4.syncFromOrigin
Because importing commits from other Git repositories is much
faster than importing them from p4, a mechanism exists to
find p4 changes first in Git remotes. If branches exist under
refs/remote/origin/p4, those will be fetched and used when
syncing from p4. This variable can be set to false to disable
this behavior.
git-p4.branchUser
One phase in branch detection involves looking at p4 branches
to find new ones to import. By default, all branches are
inspected. This option limits the search to just those owned
by the single user named in the variable.
git-p4.branchList
List of branches to be imported when branch detection is
enabled. Each entry should be a pair of branch names
separated by a colon (:). This example declares that both
branchA and branchB were created from main:
git config git-p4.branchList main:branchA
git config --add git-p4.branchList main:branchB
git-p4.ignoredP4Labels
List of p4 labels to ignore. This is built automatically as
unimportable labels are discovered.
git-p4.importLabels
Import p4 labels into git, as per --import-labels.
git-p4.labelImportRegexp
Only p4 labels matching this regular expression will be
imported. The default value is [a-zA-Z0-9_\-.]+$.
git-p4.useClientSpec
Specify that the p4 client spec should be used to identify p4
depot paths of interest. This is equivalent to specifying the
option --use-client-spec. See the "CLIENT SPEC" section
above. This variable is a boolean, not the name of a p4
client.
git-p4.pathEncoding
Perforce keeps the encoding of a path as given by the
originating OS. Git expects paths encoded as UTF-8. Use this
config to tell git-p4 what encoding Perforce had used for the
paths. This encoding is used to transcode the paths to UTF-8.
As an example, Perforce on Windows often uses "cp1252" to
encode path names. If this option is passed into a p4 clone
request, it is persisted in the resulting new git repo.
git-p4.metadataDecodingStrategy
Perforce keeps the encoding of a changelist descriptions and
user full names as stored by the client on a given OS. The
p4v client uses the OS-local encoding, and so different users
can end up storing different changelist descriptions or user
full names in different encodings, in the same depot. Git
tolerates inconsistent/incorrect encodings in commit messages
and author names, but expects them to be specified in utf-8.
git-p4 can use three different decoding strategies in
handling the encoding uncertainty in Perforce: passthrough
simply passes the original bytes through from Perforce to
git, creating usable but incorrectly-encoded data when the
Perforce data is encoded as anything other than utf-8.
strict expects the Perforce data to be encoded as utf-8, and
fails to import when this is not true. fallback attempts to
interpret the data as utf-8, and otherwise falls back to
using a secondary encoding - by default the common windows
encoding cp-1252 - with upper-range bytes escaped if decoding
with the fallback encoding also fails. Under python2 the
default strategy is passthrough for historical reasons, and
under python3 the default is fallback. When strict is
selected and decoding fails, the error message will propose
changing this config parameter as a workaround. If this
option is passed into a p4 clone request, it is persisted
into the resulting new git repo.
git-p4.metadataFallbackEncoding
Specify the fallback encoding to use when decoding Perforce
author names and changelists descriptions using the fallback
strategy (see git-p4.metadataDecodingStrategy). The fallback
encoding will only be used when decoding as utf-8 fails. This
option defaults to cp1252, a common windows encoding. If this
option is passed into a p4 clone request, it is persisted
into the resulting new git repo.
git-p4.largeFileSystem
Specify the system that is used for large (binary) files.
Please note that large file systems do not support the git p4
submit command. Only Git LFS is implemented right now (see
https://git-lfs.github.com/ for more information). Download
and install the Git LFS command line extension to use this
option and configure it like this:
git config git-p4.largeFileSystem GitLFS
git-p4.largeFileExtensions
All files matching a file extension in the list will be
processed by the large file system. Do not prefix the
extensions with ..
git-p4.largeFileThreshold
All files with an uncompressed size exceeding the threshold
will be processed by the large file system. By default the
threshold is defined in bytes. Add the suffix k, m, or g to
change the unit.
git-p4.largeFileCompressedThreshold
All files with a compressed size exceeding the threshold will
be processed by the large file system. This option might slow
down your clone/sync process. By default the threshold is
defined in bytes. Add the suffix k, m, or g to change the
unit.
git-p4.largeFilePush
Boolean variable which defines if large files are
automatically pushed to a server.
git-p4.keepEmptyCommits
A changelist that contains only excluded files will be
imported as an empty commit if this boolean option is set to
true.
git-p4.mapUser
Map a P4 user to a name and email address in Git. Use a
string with the following format to create a mapping:
git config --add git-p4.mapUser "p4user = First Last <[email protected]>"
A mapping will override any user information from P4.
Mappings for multiple P4 user can be defined.
Submit variables
git-p4.detectRenames
Detect renames. See git-diff(1). This can be true, false, or
a score as expected by git diff -M.
git-p4.detectCopies
Detect copies. See git-diff(1). This can be true, false, or a
score as expected by git diff -C.
git-p4.detectCopiesHarder
Detect copies harder. See git-diff(1). A boolean.
git-p4.preserveUser
On submit, re-author changes to reflect the Git author,
regardless of who invokes git p4 submit.
git-p4.allowMissingP4Users
When preserveUser is true, git p4 normally dies if it cannot
find an author in the p4 user map. This setting submits the
change regardless.
git-p4.skipSubmitEdit
The submit process invokes the editor before each p4 change
is submitted. If this setting is true, though, the editing
step is skipped.
git-p4.skipSubmitEditCheck
After editing the p4 change message, git p4 makes sure that
the description really was changed by looking at the file
modification time. This option disables that test.
git-p4.allowSubmit
By default, any branch can be used as the source for a git p4
submit operation. This configuration variable, if set,
permits only the named branches to be used as submit sources.
Branch names must be the short names (no "refs/heads/"), and
should be separated by commas (","), with no spaces.
git-p4.skipUserNameCheck
If the user running git p4 submit does not exist in the p4
user map, git p4 exits. This option can be used to force
submission regardless.
git-p4.attemptRCSCleanup
If enabled, git p4 submit will attempt to cleanup RCS
keywords ($Header$, etc). These would otherwise cause merge
conflicts and prevent the submit going ahead. This option
should be considered experimental at present.
git-p4.exportLabels
Export Git tags to p4 labels, as per --export-labels.
git-p4.labelExportRegexp
Only p4 labels matching this regular expression will be
exported. The default value is [a-zA-Z0-9_\-.]+$.
git-p4.conflict
Specify submit behavior when a conflict with p4 is found, as
per --conflict. The default behavior is ask.
git-p4.disableRebase
Do not rebase the tree against p4/master following a submit.
git-p4.disableP4Sync
Do not sync p4/master with Perforce following a submit.
Implies git-p4.disableRebase.
• Changesets from p4 are imported using Git fast-import.
• Cloning or syncing does not require a p4 client; file
contents are collected using p4 print.
• Submitting requires a p4 client, which is not in the same
location as the Git repository. Patches are applied, one at a
time, to this p4 client and submitted from there.
• Each commit imported by git p4 has a line at the end of the
log message indicating the p4 depot location and change
number. This line is used by later git p4 sync operations to
know which p4 changes are new.
Part of the git(1) suite
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2024-06-14. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2024-06-12.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Git 2.45.2.492.gd63586 2024-06-12 GIT-P4(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1)
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