# From Perforce to Git 3 messages from 2008-10-25 to 2008-10-26. Participants: Brandon, David Symonds. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/16044 ## Brandon, 2008-10-25 21:18 Subject: From Perforce to Git Message-ID: <82c87da00810251418y4a6ef1fbgccefb12061535226@mail.gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/82c87da00810251418y4a6ef1fbgccefb12061535226%40mail.gmail.com ``` I'm trying to make a comprehensive comparison of Perforce and Git features. There are two things I currently can't find: 1) "Who's editing what" It's been documented that git can help developers communicate who is editing what at any given time like perforce. (assuming there is a central repositry) Has anyone seen an example of scripts to do this? References: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/ch07.html (Who's editing what) "To view "pending" changes a la P4 C or C can be used on someone else's branch, but their changes must be published." - http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2008/09/msg139661.html 2) Symlinks to checkout partial repository I believe I read symlinks could be used to checkout part of a repository. Is this true? any references? I imagine submodules is the preferred way of doing this, and "narrow" or "partial" or "sparse" checkouts are under development (http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2008/9/14/3292714), but I'm still interested in learning this solution. any direction would be appreciated, -brandon ``` ## David Symonds, 2008-10-25 23:41 Subject: From Perforce to Git Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/ee77f5c20810251641l4892ff12n7b30667c6fcc903c%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Brandon wrote: > I'm trying to make a comprehensive comparison of Perforce and Git > features. There are two things I currently can't find: > > 1) "Who's editing what" > It's been documented that git can help developers communicate who > is editing what at any given time like perforce. (assuming there is a > central repositry) Has anyone seen an example of scripts to do this? That's the primary feature of Perforce that kills its scalability once you get past a few hundred developers; it bloats the metadata too much. When you're using Git, there's really little point in using it, since you don't declare what files you are going to be editing, and you can find out other people's changes at merge time at your leisure (not just when *you* want to commit). > 2) Symlinks to checkout partial repository > I believe I read symlinks could be used to checkout part of a > repository. Is this true? any references? I imagine submodules is the > preferred way of doing this, and "narrow" or "partial" or "sparse" > checkouts are under development I don't think so. You could use symlinks to *simulate* a bigger repository that is actually made up of smaller repositories. Dave. ``` ## Brandon, 2008-10-26 16:08 Subject: Re: From Perforce to Git Message-ID: <82c87da00810260908w2530dbb8j7ebcabe2516d5ed@mail.gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/82c87da00810260908w2530dbb8j7ebcabe2516d5ed%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 6:41 PM, David Symonds wrote: > On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Brandon wrote: > >> I'm trying to make a comprehensive comparison of Perforce and Git >> features. There are two things I currently can't find: >> >> 1) "Who's editing what" >> It's been documented that git can help developers communicate who >> is editing what at any given time like perforce. (assuming there is a >> central repositry) Has anyone seen an example of scripts to do this? > > That's the primary feature of Perforce that kills its scalability once > you get past a few hundred developers; it bloats the metadata too > much. When you're using Git, there's really little point in using it, > since you don't declare what files you are going to be editing, and > you can find out other people's changes at merge time at your leisure > (not just when *you* want to commit). I think there is an even more fundamental problem with this feature. Since perforce 'forces' developers the checkout files for edit, eventually you just ignore these warnings because you don't know if someone is really checking something out to make a change they are going to commit, or just need to make a file writable to experiment with some other feature they're working on etc... This feature would work much better if it were optional. I don't really care about the feature per se I would just like to be able to state that Git can offer everything that perforce can. I would imagine this would require users pushing their changes to a branch in the central git repo. Then other users could use git log or cherry to see what files others are interested in (aka declared they are going to edit)? Not that this is necessarily a good way to work. >> 2) Symlinks to checkout partial repository >> I believe I read symlinks could be used to checkout part of a >> repository. Is this true? any references? I imagine submodules is the >> preferred way of doing this, and "narrow" or "partial" or "sparse" >> checkouts are under development > > I don't think so. You could use symlinks to *simulate* a bigger > repository that is actually made up of smaller repositories. > > > Dave. > thanks, I'm pretty sure I'm just imagining reading this somewhere, I just needed some confirmation. ```