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Documentation | 2025.2

# Changelists

Changelists are the basic unit of versioning work in P4 Server. A changelist is a list of files, their revision numbers, and the changes made to those files. Commits is a shorter synonym used throughout P4 Code Review.

More information is available here:

- Browsing changelists
- Browsing a user's shelved changelists
- P4 Code Review's internal use of changelists to facilitate code reviews

## Changelist display

View a specific changelist A list of files, their version numbers, the changes made to the files, and a description of the changes made. A changelist is the basic unit of versioned work in P4 Server. The changes specified in the changelist are not stored in the depot until the changelist is submitted to the depot. See also atomic change transaction and changelist number. by clicking on a linked changelist number, or by visiting the URL: `https://myswarm.url/changes/changelist number`.

When P4 Code Review displays a change, the presentation is similar to:

P4 Code Review supports stream specs in your workspace using the Private editing of streams feature. If a changelist or review contains a stream spec, it will be displayed first in Files with the prefix stream: //, for example: stream://MyStreamDepotName/MyStreamSpecLocationName. A changelist/review can only contain one stream spec.

The changelist display includes:

- The avatar and userid of the user who made the change
- The time the change was made
- The common depot location containing all the files included in the change

- The Download .zip button, used to download a ZIP archive that contains all of the files in the changelist:

  The Download zip option is not displayed if the zip command-line tool is not installed on the P4 Code Review server. For information about installing, and configuring the zip command-line tool, see Zip archive.

  When you select the Download zip option, P4 Code Review performs the following steps:

  1. Scans the files/folders:
     - Checks that you have permission to access their contents, according to the P4 Server protections.
     - Checks that the total file size is small enough to be processed by P4 Code Review.
  2. Syncs the file contents to the P4 Code Review server from the P4 Server.
  3. Creates the ZIP archive by compressing the file content.
  4. Starts a download of the generated ZIP archive.
  - You might not see all of the above steps; P4 Code Review caches the resulting ZIP archives so that repeated requests to the same files/folders can skip the sync and compress steps whenever possible.
  - If an error occurs while scanning, syncing, or compressing, P4 Code Review indicates the error.
- If the change was involved in a code review, a link to the review along with a View Review button.
- The description of the change
- A list of jobs that this change fixes, if any. You can add jobs and unlink jobs here.
- The list of files included in the change, including any folders between the common depot location and the file, and the file's version number.
- A tab to review any comments made regarding the change, or any of its files.

Each file is presented in a diff display, showing you whether the file was added, modified, or deleted. For text-based and image files, P4 Code Review can display any changes made within the file. For changes with only a single file, the diff display is the default; otherwise each file is listed. Click the filename to see the diff display. See Diffs for more information.

The Request Review button indicates the current state of this change; no Review record has been created. Clicking Request Review starts a code review for this change. For more information, see Start a review.

If your P4 Server is configured as a commit-edge deployment, and your normal connection is to an edge server, P4 Code Review refuses to start reviews for shelved changes that have not been promoted to the commit server.

Within P4 Code Review, this means that the Request Review button does not appear for unpromoted shelved changes. Outside of P4 Code Review, attempts to start reviews for unpromoted shelved changelists appear to do nothing. Ask your P4 Server administrator for assistance if you cannot start a review.

An administrator of the P4 Server can automatically promote shelved changes to the commit server by setting the configurable `dm.shelve.promote` to 1.

When a file in a changelist has one or more associated comments, an icon appears near the far right of the file's entry.

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