Open file(s) in a client workspace for addition to the depot.

p4 [g-opts] add [-c changelist] [-d -f -I -n] [-t filetype] file ...

p4 add opens files within the client workspace for addition to the depot. The specified file(s) are linked to a changelist; the files are not actually added to the depot until the changelist is committed with p4 submit. The added files must either not already exist in the depot, or exist in the depot but be marked as deleted at the head revision.

The commands p4 add * or p4 add ... are synonymous to p4 reconcile -a * — that is, all files in the workspace that do not exist in the depot will be opened for add. Using the -a option does not affect the behavior of p4 add -d.

To open a file with p4 add, the file must exist in your client view, but does not need to exist in your workspace at the time of p4 add. The file must, however, exist in your workspace when you run p4 submit, or the submission will fail. p4 add does not create or overwrite files in your workspace; if a file does not exist, you must create it yourself.

By default, the specified files are opened in the default changelist. To open the files in a specified changelist, use the -c option. (To move files from the default changelist to a numbered changelist, use the p4 change command.)

By default, p4 add skips over files mentioned in any applicable P4IGNORE files. To override this behavior, use the -I option to ignore the contents of any P4IGNORE files.

When adding files, Perforce first examines the typemap table (p4 typemap) to see if the system administrator has defined a file type for the file(s) being added. If a match is found, the file’s type is set as defined in the typemap table. If a match is not found, Perforce examines the first bytes of the file based on the filesys.binaryscan configurable (by default, 65536 bytes) to determine whether it is text or binary, and the files are stored in the depot accordingly. By default, text file revisions are stored in reverse delta format; newly-added text files larger than the limit imposed by the filetype.maxtextsize configurable (by default, 10 MB) are assigned filetype text+C and stored in full. Files compressed in the .zip format (including .jar files) are also automatically detected and assigned the type ubinary. Other binary revisions are stored in full, with compression.

The -t filetype option explicitly specifies a file type, overriding both the typemap table and Perforce’s default file type detection mechanism.

To add files containing the characters @, #, *, and %, use the -f option. This option forces literal interpretation of characters otherwise used by Perforce as wildcards.

If you open a file for edit or move/add, and another subsequently deletes the file you opened, the operation will fail with an error when you submit the changelist. To ensure that you create the desired target file, specify the -d option ("downgrade"). More specifically: