Specify what to copy

As described in “Understanding Remotes”, you typically specify which files will be pushed or fetched by listing depot paths in the DepotMap field of the remote spec. You can further narrow the set of files to be fetched or pushed with one of two command-line arguments: one specifying a filespec pattern and the other specifying a stream (with the -S option).

If a filespec or stream name is provided, and the remote spec uses differing patterns for the local and remote sides of the DepotMap, the filespec argument or stream name must specify the files using the local server’s depot syntax. Note that the filespec must always be provided using depot syntax, not client syntax nor filesystem syntax. For more information, see “Understanding Remotes”.

  • To specify a remote you pass the -r option and the name of the remote to the p4 fetch or p4 push command. If -r is not specified, the default is -r origin: 

    $ p4 fetch -r markm-remote

  • To specify a filespec you pass a filespec pattern to the p4 fetch or p4 push command. 

    $ p4 fetch //depot/projectx/...

  • To specify a stream you pass the -S option to the p4 fetch or p4 push command. Note that the stream must be listed in a depot mapping in your remote spec. 

    $ p4 fetch -S //stream/dev

    where dev is the name of the stream on your local server

Note that when you specify a filespec or a stream, the Helix Versioning Engine cannot use the performance optimization provided by the remote spec.

Unlike other versioning engines such as Git, you do not have to fetch or push the entire contents of the remote server’s repository; rather, you can fetch or push whatever subset of the repository you like. You specify this subset in the remote spec or at the command line of the fetch or push command.

Fetch a limited subset of history

If you have a server with a lot of history you may only want to fetch the latest few revisions to save on local storage. To do so, use the -m N option: 

$ p4 fetch -m 5

This specifies that the server perform a shallow fetch, fetching only the last 5 revisions of each file. You can also take a slice of your history as noted above.