Using the stream graph

The Streams tab lists streams or displays a Stream Graph that shows the relationships between parent and child streams in a selected depot.

Display streams

  1. Go to View > Streams or click the Streams stream toolbar button to open the Streams tab.
  2. Select a display option by clicking the Show streams in a graph, list or tree streams display icon:

  3. Search for streams or restrict the streams that are displayed by using a filter:

Stream graph display conventions

In the Streams tab, the Stream Graph provides a graphical view of stream relationships and provides tools and shortcuts for working with streams.

The graph uses location and color to depict stream types: mainline streams are gray and placed in the middle of the graph, release streams are orange and appear above the mainline, and development streams are blue and appear below.

stream graph

Status indicators between streams tell you which streams have changes to contribute and where the changes can be copied or merged:

Merge indicator: stream arrow merge

Copy indicator: stream arrow copy

The arrows are color-coded to indicate status:

For example, the following arrows above the dev-2.1M2 stream indicate that you must update it by merging down from its parent, after which you can copy up changes to the parent.

streams merge copy indic

The workspace icon workspaces indicates the stream you are currently working in.

You can drag the workspace icon to another stream to switch your workspace to that stream. The Stream field value in the workspace definition changes to the new stream.

Configure the stream graph display

  1. In the Stream Graph view, click the filter stream filter icon on the Streams tab toolbar.

    The Graph View Options dialog is displayed.

  2. Choose the depot containing the streams you want to view from the Depot drop-down list.
  3. To select the streams you want displayed in the graph, click Select Streams and choose the display option, or check the individual streams that you want displayed in the graph.

    You may need to expand the tree within the dialog pane to view the streams you want to select.

  4. To view the actual depot location of the selected streams in the Stream Graph, select Stream Root as your Display stream option.

    The full depot path appears in the stream node for each stream:

    streamrootdisplay

    This is useful if you have parent streams with child task streams that are located in other depots. To change the size of the stream node to accommodate long depot paths, you can move the Stream node width slider. You can also select these display preferences in P4V > Preferences > Streams (Mac) or Edit > Preferences > Streams (Windows).

  5. Click Apply.

    The Stream Graph displays the streams that you specified.

  6. (Optional) Click the Graph Navigatorstream graph navigator icon or button to open the Graph Navigator dialog, where you can configure the size of the Stream Graph display and select which portion of the Stream Graph to view.

    Use your mouse or cursor keys on the navigator pane to select the portion of the image you want to view.

Display stream status

Double-click a stream to view a popup that contains status details:

stream popup

Work in a stream

To work in a stream or switch from one stream to another, do one of the following:

Branching with Streams

To create a new development or release branch, you create a child stream from a parent. You can also create virtual siblings of your mainline stream by branching.

Note

You can create task streams by creating a child stream from a parent, but you can also create parentless task streams. For more information about how branch a task stream, see Working with Task Streams.

To create a child stream:

  1. In the Streams tab, right-click the stream and select Create New Stream from 'stream_name'…​
  2. In the Stream:New dialog, define the new stream.

    See Creating new streams.

  3. Verify that the new stream appears correctly in the stream graph.

    If you have specified the stream type correctly, more stable streams are displayed above the parent and less stable streams below the parent.

You can also reparent streams that have already been branched. To reparent a stream, do one of the following:

Note

You cannot reparent task streams.