p4survey

A survey tool to gather basic information about a P4 installation.

Download and run it as a logged-in Perforce super user. For the most complete report, run it on the central commit or master server; running from a client machine is also supported, but host-level information may be unavailable.

To send us accompanying pre-consulting survey information, download the survey questionnaire, open the downloaded file in a browser, and complete it locally (saving it as Markdown report).

Table of Contents

• p4survey
  • Overview
  • Quick start
  • Download
  • Help
  • Topology Diagram
  • More detail

Overview

Download the binary for your platform and execute it. The tool writes a Markdown report that can be zipped and sent to Perforce Consulting or Support (or the person who emailed you the link).

The following settings can be supplied through the environment or command-line parameters:

• P4PORT: the p4d server to query
• P4USER: the p4d (super) user account to use
• P4BIN: the path to p4 or p4.exe if it is not on your shell PATH

You must already be logged in to the p4d server and have super privileges. The tool exits with an error otherwise.

Quick start

On Linux, download the appropriate binary, decompress it, make it executable, and run the survey:

wget https://swarm.workshop.perforce.com/downloads/guest/perforce_software/p4survey/bin/p4survey.linux-amd64.gz
gunzip p4survey.linux-amd64.gz
chmod +x p4survey.linux-amd64
mv p4survey.linux-amd64  p4survey

# Execute it - with parameters if required.
./p4survey

On Windows, use PowerShell to download the executable and remove the security marker that Windows adds to files downloaded from the internet:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://swarm.workshop.perforce.com/downloads/guest/perforce_software/p4survey/bin/p4survey.windows-amd64.exe" -OutFile ".\p4survey.exe"
Unblock-File -Path ".\p4survey.exe"

# Execute it - with parameters if required.
& ".\p4survey.exe"

The tool reports the generated filename, for example:

Running p4survey analysis as user "jbloggs" on P4PORT "some-server:2001"
Topology data written: p4_topology_data.XXXX.json
Markdown report written: p4survey.XXXX.md
Email the generated survey report, topology data, and completed survey questionnaire to Perforce Consulting or Support.

Send the resulting report to Perforce Consulting or Support.

Download

Click a download link directly, or copy its target to use with wget or curl.

For the accompanying pre-consulting checklist, download the survey questionnaire, open the downloaded file in a browser, complete it locally, and download the responses as Markdown.

Help

usage: p4survey [<flags>]

A survey tool for Perforce P4 servers. Will report on the server configuration.

Must be run as a logged in superuser.


Flags:
  -h, --help           Show context-sensitive help (also try --help-long and --help-man).
  -u, --p4user=P4USER  (Optional) Perforce user (default $P4USER)
  -p, --p4port=P4PORT  (Optional) Perforce server port (default $P4PORT)
      --p4bin=P4BIN    (Optional) Full path of p4 CLI (default is 'p4' in $PATH)
      --no-topology    Do not collect topology data
      --topology-svg   Collect topology data and render a pure-Go SVG diagram
      --topology-layout=layered
        SVG layout: layered or sfdp
      --topology-input=TOPOLOGY-INPUT
                       Render a pure-Go SVG diagram from saved topology JSON
      --debug          Debug output
  -V, --version        Show application version.

The output is a Markdown report and topology data in a JSON file that can be sent to Perforce Consulting or Support. Use --no-topology to omit topology data.

Topology Diagram

Topology data is collected by default. Use --no-topology to omit it, or use --topology-svg to also create an interactive SVG showing servers and their hostnames. The default layered layout is deterministic and pure Go: it does not require CGO, Graphviz, or Python. The SVG can be opened in a browser to rearrange nodes and download the edited layout.

Use --topology-layout=sfdp when Graphviz sfdp is installed and on PATH. To create an SVG from previously saved topology JSON without connecting to P4, run:

./p4survey --topology-input p4_topology_data.example.json

This writes p4_topology_data.example.svg beside the input file.

For Mermaid, HTML, AsciiDoc, alternate SVG layouts, and the legacy Python renderer, see Topology renderer.

More detail

• Data collected and P4 commands run
• Topology renderer
• Survey questionnaire: download it, open the local file in a browser, collect review context, and download it as Markdown to email to us.