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P4 CLI Documentation | 2025.2

# What’s new in P4 Server 2021.2 and earlier

Learn about new features, enhancements, and bug fixes in 2021.2 and earlier P4 Server releases.

## 2021.2

- (Technical Preview) The p4 topology command lists information about all the servers that are connected to the server on which the command is run.

- Support for one-to-many "ditto" mappings of paths in stream specs. See

  - `import&` under Paths: in the p4 stream topic

  - the Example of ditto mapping for a stream spec

- You can find out which streams have views for the depot path you specify. See the new `--viewmatch` option of p4 streams.

- To enable automatic reporting of the global lock status on files when running p4 commands that open files on edge servers, set the dm.open.show.globallocks configurable. To get notification manually, use new `-OL` option of p4 fstat.

- To improve performance by making the server use a buffer for writing to the structured log file, set the serverlog.bufsz.N configurable.

- To improve performance for p4 populate, set the dm.populate.skipkeyed configurable.

- Support for SSL/TLS connections that do not require P4TRUST.

- To list only labels with the `autoreload` option set, use the `-R` option of p4 labels.

- Propagating attributes are now supported on edge servers for commands that open files, such as `p4 copy`, `p4 delete`, `p4 edit`, `p4 integrate`, `p4 reconcile`, `p4 resolve`, `p4 shelve`, `p4 submit`, and `p4 unshelve`.

- For graph depots A depot of type graph that is used to store Git repos managed by P4 Server. See also Git Connector and classic depot., three new commands are related to the removal of obsolete metadata: p4 graph gc (graph), p4 graph purge-refhist (graph), and p4 graph recompute-refcnts (graph). For the complete use case, see Delete a repo and free the used storage in Work with Git in P4 Server Administration Documentation.

- Helix Core Extensions now support the Windows platform because the memory manager for P4 server has changed to mimalloc, which Microsoft developed for multiplatform use. To find out which version of mimalloc, see the output of the `p4 -ztag info` and `p4d -V` commands.

The P4 CLI Documentation was formerly titled Helix Core P4 Command Reference.

## 2021.1

- You can enable the display of real-time monitoring values. See p4 monitor realtime.

- The ability to switch to a different stream that resides in a different stream hierarchy. See `--allow-unrelated` under Options in p4 switch.

- p4 obliterate:

  - has the `-T` option to obliterate task streams

  - has the `--purged-only` option to remove records that have previously been purged.

  - when run in report mode, includes how many archived revisions it would delete. With no `-A` flag, it reports the number of archived revisions that it ignored.

- p4 verify:

  - has the flexibility to report `--only BAD` or `--only MISSING` files

  - has the `-R` option to help in disaster recovery involving shelved files.

- p4 resolve`-as` behaves differently if the new `dm.resolve.ignoredeleted` configurable is set.

- The p4 repo (graph) spec has four new Form fields for mirroring repos with Git Connector: `GonnMirrorSecretToken:, GconnMirrorServerId:, GconnMirrorStatus:, GconnMirrorExcludedBranches:`

- P4PROOT allows the proxy database to be stored in a different directory than the archives.

## 2020.2

- Streams and inheritance:
  - The p4 stream specification has a new field, ParentView: that can be set with the --parentview parameter to either of the following values:
    - inherit, which is the original behavior of streams. The inheritance is implicit, so the inherited Paths, Remapped, and Ignored values are not displayed with the child stream specification.
      - Task streams and virtual streams must always be inherit.
    - noinherit, which means that the Paths, Remapped, and Ignored fields are not affected by the stream's ancestors. For example, the build system for a noinherit release stream continues to build even if the import path of its parent mainline stream has switched to newer libraries that the release stream does not have.
      - Release, development and mainline streams can be inherit or noinherit.
    - Because a mainline stream has no parent, the inherit or noinherit settings have no meaning for a mainline stream unless the mainline stream is converted to a different stream type.
    - The dm.stream.parentview configurable determines whether a newly-created stream is inherit or noinherit
    - To learn more, see Stream ParentView examples.
  - The p4 stream command has a new option, parentview, that can be used to convert an existing mainline, development, or release stream from noinherit to inherit, or from inherit to noinherit.
    - If you convert a child stream to be noinherit, paths that are implicit in an inherit stream become explicit.
      - The --source-comments option causes comments to appear in the child stream spec. Such comments begin with ##. For example:
        exclude myExclude/... ## copy from //stream/main@5
        indicate that version 5 of the parent stream spec is the source of this path.
      - You can also add manually add comments to a stream spec.
- Streams integration:
  - If, for any reason, you want path changes of the parent stream to be applied to a child stream with a ParentView that is noinherit, use stream spec integration. See p4 integrate for the syntax p4 integrate -S stream [-As | -Af]
  - Stream spec integration can also be used to integrated the values of custom, propagatable fields, regardless of the parent view setting.
  - The dm.integ.streamspec configurable determines how stream spec integration works with regard to noinherit.
  - The p4 istat command has the -As and -Af options to report the integration status of the stream spec and the stream files.
  - The p4 streamlog command now shows a stream spec's integration and revision history. This command has new options: -c for changelist, -i for inherited stream history, and -h for the history of stream content.

- During upgrades to a new server version, the upgrade steps now execute in the background (applies to 2019.2 and later upgrade steps). This can improve server availability and replication performance during upgrades.

  - The p4 upgrades command indicates the status of upgrade steps.

- Enhancement of the background submit feature: if the administrator has not enabled background submit, the -b option is ignored and standard submit behavior occurs. See About background archive transfer for edge server submits.

- The p4 dbschema command has the -A option to display information about all versions of one or more database tables.
- For graph depots, to control the retaining or unpacking of Git packfiles into loose objects when Git Connector imports the contents of an external Git repo into a P4 graph depot, set the dm.repo.unpack configurable in the Configurables chapter.

- Connections and commands completing faster than the threshold defined by the new db.monitor.addthresh configurable are not added to the db.monitor table at monitor levels 1 or 2.

- For the p4 failover command,

  - Failover from a mandatory standby server when the target server is not participating used to require specifying -s <serverID>. Now, failover for this scenario includes checking the ReplicatingFrom field of the standby server spec for the target server's serverID when -s is not specified on the command line.

  - Part of the failover process involves stopping the journalcopy and pull threads. If the failover process fails, those threads needed to be restarted manually. Now any pull -L, pull -u, or journalcopy threads that were configured using startup.N configurables will automatically be restarted if the failover process did not succeed.

## 2020.1

- The storage upgrade process:

  - is now visible through the p4 monitor command.

  - can make use of a new configurable that can suppress the generation of digests during a storage upgrade. See lbr.storage.skipkeyed.

- To monitor the responsiveness of a server, see:
  - the new p4 heartbeat command
  - the new configurables net.heartbeat.interval, net.heartbeat.wait, net.heartbeat.missing.interval, net.heartbeat.missing.wait, and net.heartbeat.missing.count
- TLS 1.3 is now supported, but TLS 1.2 remains the default. See ssl.tls.version.max
- The p4 protects command:
  - has new access levels for stream spec protections. See `readstreamspec`, `openstreamspec`, and `writestreamspec` in the p4 protect topic.
  - has the new `-H` option, which displays the protections that apply to the current client's host (IP address)
  - supports using the `-M` option with the `-h` flag to display the protections that apply to the specified host (IP address)
- The host field in the protections table now allows multiple IP addresses or CIDR matchers to be specified on a single line with a comma-separated list.
- Global labels can now be updated from edge servers using either `p4 tag -g` or `p4 labelsync -g`. See p4 tag and p4 labelsync.
- The new `--no-graph` option for p4 have and p4 have (graph) limits the output to non-graph files when working with a hybrid workspace A client workspace that supports both repos of type graph (see also 'Git Connector') and the classic P4 file revision model..
- The `p4 graph log` command has added functionality to the `--oneline` option:
  - an optional `tree` value adds a column in the output for tree-SHA-1 values
  - an optional `--no-abbrev` value causes SHA-1 values in the output to appear in the original 40 characters, instead of the default 7 characters abbreviation

  See p4 graph log (graph).

- `p4 extension --list --type=extensions` has two new fields to indicate if the extension has a global configuration and at least one instance configuration. See p4 extension.

### Extensions support certificates and installation by admins, not just super users

By default, only super users are permitted to install Extensions, but as of this change, it's possible for 'admin' users to install, configure and delete them as well if the Extension is signed and the signature of the signing key has been installed in the Extensions depot. See p4 extension as well as the server.extensions.allow.admin and server.extensions.allow.unsigned configurables.

## 2019.2

- p4 configure history allows the super user to display information about changes to configurables on any 2019.2 server.
- The -p option of p4 obliterate marks the revison as purged and leave the integration history intact rather than removing the records. This one-step command improves performance compared to first invoking p4 archive, and then invoking p4 archive -p
- p4 stream and p4 jobspec support the automatic assignment of values to identify custom fields.
- p4 storage has new options, -l and -d, to locate and delete any existing "orphaned" files left over from a previous failed submit or shelve operation. Two new configurables associated with this feature are lbr.storage.allowsymlink and lbr.storage.delay.
- p4 verify has a new option, -Z, to boost performance.

- Added the ability to create custom fields in stream specs. See the new command, p4 streamspec.

- To avoid the risk of conflicting field codes, field codes for custom stream and job specs can now be generated automatically if the admin uses the optional NNN placeholder value. For details, see p4 streamspec and p4 jobspec.

- A new configurable, db.monitor.term.allow, allows users to terminate their own processes.

## 2019.1

- Private editing of streams in the p4 stream topic
- Additional enhancements to streams:
  - Option to make switching between streams faster with p4 switch
  - The following commands now handle open stream specs: p4 revert, p4 resolve, p4 submit
  - p4 unshelve now defaults to unshelving both files and the stream spec. Previously, the default was to unshelve only files.
  - p4 streamlogdisplays the history of changes to the specified list of streams.
- About background archive transfer for edge server submits: the user submitting a change with p4 submit -b will see the submit complete as soon as the metadata commit is completed, and will not have to wait for the archives to transfer. To enable this feature, set submit.allowbgtransfer and, optionally, submit.autobgtransfer.
- p4 pull has the new option for -t target for recovery of failed archive transfers.
- p4 server - For all server types, the DistributedConfig: field of that server spec shows a line for each configurable that is set to a non-default value. In this field, you can edit the value, add a new line to set a different configurable to a non-default value, or delete a line to reset that configurable to its default value.

- The P4 server extensions are a fully-supported alternative to triggers. See

  - p4 extension command

  - Helix Core Extensions Developer Guide
- Support for locking Git LFS (Large File Storage) files in depots of type graph by using the new commands: p4 graph lfs-lock (graph), p4 graph lfs-locks (graph), and p4 graph lfs-unlock (graph) such that the locks created in P4 Server with p4 graph lfs-lock are visible to Git clients, and the locks created in Git with git lfs lock are visible to P4 Server.
- By default, the server.maxcommands.allow configurable enables the super and operator users to issue certain administrative commands even if the server.maxcommands is blocking standard users.
- Failover: see the Description section on the p4 failover topic about the High Availability standby server.
- p4 archive has the new -z option, which can reduce disk space usage.
- The net.autotune configurable is enabled (1) by default. This enables the TCP stack to manage the size of the network send and receive buffers, allowing more efficient use of the network, especially over slow, high-latency connections. This behavior can be disabled in clients, proxies, brokers and the server by setting the configurable to 0. On Windows-based platforms, send buffer sizes are not autotuned but are manually configurable with net.tcpsize.
- p4 reconcile has a new option, -t, to consider the file type
- p4 integrated has two new options to make it easier to show where a change has been integrated to: -s and --into-only

- The definition of the P4LANGUAGE variable was updated in 2019.1 and it should be set to the language tag and optional region for the user. For example, if $LANG is en-US.UTF-8, set P4LANGUAGE=en-US. Servers with existing message translations will need their message database to be re-seeded with an updated message file.

- Support for utilizing multiple processor groups on Windows depends on the new configurable, sys.threading.groups.

- Setting the new push.unlocklocked configurable to 1 automatically unlocks files that were locked as part of a failed push.

## 2018.2

- Failover from the current target server to a standby server has improved.
  - See p4 failover, p4 journalcopy, and p4 server
- Commands with additional functionality:
  - p4 undo supports graph depot
  - p4 user -D deletes the user's workspaces along with the user
- New configurables related to single sign-on:
  - auth.sso.args
  - auth.sso.allow.passwd
  - auth.sso.nonldap

## 2018.1 Patch

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) | For help on multi-factor authentication: For the administrator, at the P4 command line, type p4 help mfa This information is also available in the Administrator's Guide chapter on Triggers under "Triggering for multi-factor authentication (MFA)" dm.user.allowselfupdate is a configurable related to MFA configuration For the end-user: p4 help login2 also available at p4 login2 This feature is currently supported for most P4 Server clients, including: Swarm 2018.1 The 2018.2 releases of P4V, P4Eclipse, P4VS, and P4EXP
Graph depot commands | Commands to read or write against Git repos stored in the P4 Server within a Graph Depot are no longer in Tech Preview. See Git repo commands.
Configurables | To see whether changing the value of a given configurable requires stopping the server, in that configurable's details look for "After you change the value of this configurable, you must explicitly "stop" the server." For an example, see ssl.tls.version.min.

## 2018.1

Area | Feature
graph depot | For a graph depot, p4 describe can use the "classic" syntax, or using the SHA1, can provide a commit description. See the `p4 description` Examples for files. p4 filelog p4 fstat p4 print p4 revert p4 show-permissions (graph) p4 graph show-ref (graph) p4 graph tags (graph) p4 log - at the command-line, type p4 help-graph log p4 rebase - at the command-line, type p4 help-graph rebase triggers related to graph depots: see the What's New in the P4 Server Administration Documentation. Support for Git Large File Storage (LFS). A replica can sync LFS files from graph depots. See the File Types chapter on File type modifiers, specifically the `+F` modifier.
Configurables reference | rpl.journalcopy.location be useful in a distributed environment. For details, see P4 Server Administration Documentation. To prevent p4 info from exposing sensitive fields, consider using dm.info.hide. p4 configure `set` now notifies you when you attempt to set a numeric configurable to a value outside of the acceptable range. Previously, a value below the minimum was silently altered to the minimum, and a value above the maximum was silently altered to the maximum. (Configurables already set outside the acceptable ranges will continue to be silently altered.) To prevent users from being created if they would have no permissions on the server, you can configure auth.ldap.userautocreate Additional security is available by using auth.tickets.nounlocked filesys.checklinks supports an additional value, 3
p4 admin | For failover scenarios, the `p4 admin end-journal` command can be useful. See that command's Examples
p4 keys | p4 keys -e nameFilter supports a period in key names
p4 stream | Stream path definitions can include a wildcard in the final expression of a path, following the last slash. You can use this feature to refer to a collection of files, such as `path_type pattern/to/....exe` or path_type pattern/to/*.txt For examples, see theTo manage files of a similar file type in your stream specs, consider using wildcards (... and *) after the final slash (/) in the path definition:
Second factor authentication | For details and examples, see the `p4 help 2fa` documentation and the Perforce Knowledge Base article, Second Factor Authentication Support. Please note that not all client applications have added support for second factor authentication yet.
LDAP | You can track the activity of p4 ldapsync. See `ldapsync.csv` at p4 logparse.

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