Preface

This guide tells you how to use the Helix Command Line Client (p4). Unless you’re an experienced Helix user, we strongly urge you to read the "Basic Concepts" chapter of Introducing Helix before reading this guide.

Perforce provides many applications that enable you to manage your files, including the command line client, GUIs — such as P4V — and plug-ins. The command line client enables you to script and to perform administrative tasks that are not supported by Helix GUIs.

Note

If you’re new to Helix software, start with the “Tutorial”, and then read “Overview”.

What’s new in this guide for 2016.2

This section provides a list of changes to this guide for the Helix Versioning Engine 2016.2 release. For a list of all new functionality and major bug fixes in Helix Versioning Engine 2016.2, see the Helix Versioning Engine 2016.2 Release Notes.

You can now undo a submitted change

See “Basic tasks”.

Helix documentation

The following table lists and describes key documents for Helix users, developers, and administrators. For complete information see the following:

http://www.perforce.com/documentation

For specific information about…​ See this documentation…​

Introduction to version control concepts and workflows; Helix architecture, and related products.

Introducing Helix

Using the command-line interface to perform software version management and codeline management; working with Helix streams; jobs, reporting, scripting, and more.

Helix Versioning Engine User Guide

Basic workflows using P4V, the cross-platform Helix desktop client.

P4V User Guide

Working with personal and shared servers and understanding the distributed versioning features of the Helix Versioning engine.

Using Helix for Distributed Versioning

p4 command line (reference).

P4 Command Reference, p4 help

Installing and administering the Helix versioning engine, including user management, security settings.

Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Fundamentals

Installing and configuring Helix servers (proxies, replicas, and edge servers) in a distributed environment.

Helix Versioning Engine Administrator Guide: Multi-site Deployment

Helix plug-ins and integrations.

IDEs: Using IDE Plug-ins
Defect trackers: Defect Tracking Gateway Guide
Others: online help from the Helix menu or web site

Developing custom Helix applications using the Helix C/C++ API.

C/C++ API User Guide

Working with Helix in Ruby, Perl, Python, and PHP.

APIs for Scripting

Syntax conventions

Helix documentation uses the following syntax conventions to describe command line syntax.

Notation Meaning

literal

Monospace font indicates a word or other notation that must be used in the command exactly as shown.

italics

Italics indicate a parameter for which you must supply specific information. For example, for a serverid parameter, you must supply the id of the server.

[-f]

Square brackets indicate that the enclosed elements are optional. Omit the brackets when you compose the command.

Elements that are not bracketed are required.

…​

Ellipses (…​) indicate that the preceding element can be repeated as often as needed.

element1 | element2

A vertical bar ( | ) indicates that either element1 or element2 is required.

Please give us feedback

We are interested in receiving opinions on this manual from our users. In particular, we’d like to hear from users who have never used Perforce before. Does this guide teach the topic well? Please let us know what you think; we can be reached at manual@perforce.com.

If you need assistance, or wish to provide feedback about any of our products, contact support@perforce.com.