Version 2015.1
P4Ruby is a native Ruby gem that allows you to run Perforce commands from Ruby applications, and retrieve the results in a Ruby-friendly format.
P4Ruby is intended to work against a corresponding version of the Perforce C++ API, e.g., P4Ruby 2014.2 will be compiled using a 2014.2 version of the P4API. You can always install P4Ruby specifying a specific version of the P4API.
To determine the version of your P4Ruby, and which version of the P4API it has been built with, issue the following command:
ruby -rP4 -e "puts P4.identify"
As of 2015.1, the recommended mechanism for installing P4Ruby is via rubygems.org.
Before installing, please take care that any older version of P4Ruby that
may have been installed outside of the Gem process is removed from your
gempath. The older installation process can not be easily removed and may
conflict with a gem-based install. Make sure that both P4.rb and P4.so (or
P4.bundle on OS X) are not available within the load path of Ruby. You can
use the puts $: command in irb to determine your current load path.
Outside of Windows, p4ruby gem installs must be compiled locally against your installation of Ruby. If you can build the core Ruby distribution locally, you likely can install P4Ruby without incident. On Windows, precompiled gems are available, which already include the P4API and OpenSSL.
The main command to install p4ruby is via gem or bundler. (When using the default system rubies from OS X or the CentOS Software Collections Library, see 'Problems Specifying P4API' below.)
gem install p4ruby
This will download a corresponding version of the p4api from ftp.perforce.com, and will automatically include the openssl version you have locally.
If you have downloaded the p4api and unpacked it, you can specify it using the
--with-p4api-dir option.
gem install p4ruby -- --with-p4api-dir=DIR
In this case, the DIR above is the path to the C++ API distribution that should match the major and minor version of P4Ruby. If you omit the --with-p4api-dir option, the gem will attempt to download a version of the API itself from ftp.perforce.com.
Alternatively, you can use Bundler (http://bundler.io). In your Gemfile, specify
gem 'p4_web_api_client', '~> 2015.1'
And then execute:
bundle --with-p4api-dir=DIR
On older Ruby platforms, such as the default OS X or ruby193 CentOS distributions, issues can arise when specifying the P4API directly via the command line.
In these cases, you may need to indicate the include and lib directories directly:
gem install p4ruby -- --with-p4api-dir=DIR \
--with-p4-api-include=DIR/include \
--with-p4-api-lib=DIR/lib
An alternative is to specify the P4API directory using the p4api_dir
environment variable.
Download the Perforce C++ API from the Perforce FTP site at "ftp://ftp.perforce.com/perforce". The API archive is located in release and platform-specific subdirectories and is named "p4api.tgz".
IMPORTANT: Mac OS X users MUST use the 'darwin' variant of the Perforce API. Using the 'macos' variant does not work.
Note: 32-bit builds of P4Ruby require a 32-bit version of the C++ API and a 32-bit version of Ruby. 64-bit builds of P4Ruby require a 64-bit version of the C++ API and a 64-bit version of Ruby.
Unzip the archive into an empty directory.
Extract the P4Ruby API archive into a new, empty directory.
In the p4ruby source directory, install dependencies:
bundle install
In the p4ruby source directory, build the gem:
p4api_dir=<absolute path to Perforce C++ API> rake compile
Test your distribution, which relies on a locally installed p4d.
rake test
If p4d is not available on your path, indicate it via the P4D_BIN
environment variable before running rake test.
Install P4Ruby into your local gem cache:
rake install
Perforce Server 2012.1 and later supports SSL connections and the C++ API has been compiled with this support. For applications that do not requireSSL support the C++ API provides a stub library (libp4sslstub.*) to satisfy the linker requirements.
If the P4Ruby build detects that OpenSSL is available, it will be included by default. To disable, execute the gem command using --without-ssllib. If you want to use libraries deployed to nonstandard paths, you will have to alter ext/P4/extconf.rb and include the dir_config() directives appropriate for your system.
You can use any release of P4Ruby with any release of the Perforce server later than 2001.1
You should use a version of P4Ruby built against a corresponding version of the P4API that matches your Perforce server version. Since 2014.2, you should try to use the same major and minor variation of P4Ruby as used by the Perforce server. Ergo, against Perforce server version 2015.1, you would want a P4Ruby version that starts with 2015.1.
The 2014.2 release of P4Ruby supports the 2014.2 Perforce API. Older releases might work but are not supported.
The 2014.2 release of P4Ruby is supported by installing the gem with Ruby MRI releases 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 with shared library support.
For detailed compatibility, please check the following table:
Ruby Release | P4Ruby Release
===================================
1.6 | up to 2009.2 (unsupported)
1.8 | 2007.3 or later (unsupported)
1.9 | 2011.1 or later
2.0 | 2014.1 or later
2.1 | 2015.1 or later
2.2 | 2015.1 or later
It is recommended that you use a Ruby distribution that can deploy native gems easily, which, outside of Windows means obtaining a source distribution of ruby and building it locally. This is easily done via RVM, and can be installed system-wide, with other features (like wrappers) that allow you to update the local installation of Ruby as security patches are released. If using RVM, be sure to use --disable-binary when installing your version of Ruby, to avoid any precompiled distributions that may not have shared library support configured, which is needed for Ruby extensions.
In general, Ruby VMs installed via package managers are not officially coordinated with the MRI releases available on ruby-lang.org.
We do verify that p4ruby works with Ruby 1.9 on Debian (and Ubuntu), and on CentOS 6 using the Software Collections Library. These are considered "stable" distributions, and do receive security updates.
Other versions of Ruby, such as the default distribution of OS X may not work. The default OS X Ruby is infrequently updated by Apple, and is known to contain issues that do not seem to be patched.
To build P4Ruby with encrypted communication support, you must use the version of OpenSSL that Perforce C/C++ API has been built against. Running P4Ruby linked to an older library will fail with the error:
"SSL library must be at least version 1.0.1."
The 2014.1 release of P4Ruby is supported with OpenSSL 1.0.1
For detailed compatibility, please check the following table:
Perforce C/C++ API Version | OpenSSL Release
============================================
2012.1 | 1.0.0
2012.2 | 1.0.1g+
2014.1 | 1.0.1g+
2015.1 | 1.0.1m+
Until MinGW-w64 ports are available for the underlying Perforce C/C++ API, precompiled Windows gems are not available for p4ruby. It is possible to generate precompiled gems; but understand that you will have to build the P4API using the MinGW-w64 toolchain. This is a non-trivial task and beyond the scope fo this document.
Note: As of 2012.1, a universal build of the Perforce C/C++ API is no longer available for Darwin. P4Ruby is now a 64-bit only library on Darwin and must be built with a 64-bit version of the Perforce C/C++ API for Darwin. This has been tested with a universal build of Ruby and is known to work.
To build P4Ruby from source, you must use a version of Ruby that has been compiled with the same compiler used to build the Perforce C++ API: for most platforms, use gcc/g++.
Attempting to use a different compiler or a different version of the compiler causes linker errors due to differences in name handling between compilers.
Unless otherwise stated below, the 2014.1 release of P4Ruby is compatible with previous releases from Perforce Software.
The Perforce client-server protocol is not designed to support multiple concurrent queries over the same connection. For this reason, multi-threaded applications using the C++ API or the script APIs (P4Perl, P4Ruby, etc.) should ensure that a separate connection is used for each thread or that only one thread may use a shared connection at a time.
The following methods have been deleted from the P4 class and
are no longer available:
output The output is returned by the run* methodsparse_forms Form parsing is now always ontagged See tagged? and tagged= below.In P4Ruby, both form parsing and tagged output are on by default.
Form parsing cannot be explicitly disabled, but tagged output can be turned on and off by setting p4.tagged as follows:
p4.tagged = false # Disabled
p4.tagged = true # Enabled
Because form parsing does not work when tagged output is disabled, this method can be used to disable form parsing if necessary.
This document lists all user-visible changes to P4Ruby from release 2007.3, the first supported P4Ruby release.
Perforce numbers releases YYYY.R/CCCCC, e.g. 2002.1/30547. YYYY is the year; R is the release of that year; CCCCC is the bug fix change level. Each bug fix in these release notes is marked by its change number. Any build includes (1) all bug fixes of all previous releases and (2) all bug fixes of the current release up to the bug fix change level.
Changes in both 2015.2.0.pre0 and 2015.1.0
Changes in 2015.1.0
Updated spec mappings in specmgr.cpp to be up to date with the 2015.1 P4API
Allow the P4_BIN environment variable to be set to point to a p4d for the
testing library (used by the rake test task).
New functionality in 2014.2
(SIR#28879 / P4RUBY-25)
Release P4Ruby as Gem. Until this point, the gems available on rubygems.org were unofficial builds, and prone to fail in non-interactive environments like bundler.
(SIR#75097 / P4RUBY-169)
Add enviro_file property to P4 object, which underneath, uses the
new SetEnviroFile/GetEnviroFile mechanism from the 14.2 C++ API.
Changes in 2014.2.0.pre6
Changes in 2014.2.0.pre5
Fixed an issue where using the --with-p4api-dir option to gem install would not actually set up the include and lib compilation directory correctly.
No longer distributing precompiled builds for linux or OS X due to inadequate information from gem to match the Ruby distribution correctly.
No longer embedding the C++ P4API to keep the total file size down to allow the gem to be distributed via RubyGems.org.
Changed logic to call p4.charset=nil if charset is already nil or resolves to 'none'. Internally, this will trigger a call to ClientApi::SetTrans(0), which should disable character set autodetection.
Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre4
(BUG#77207 / P4RUBY-176) If the user has specified 'P4CHARSET=none' in a configuration file, or has not set p4.charset='auto' (and it's default value was initialized to 'none' by the C++ API), automatically disable character set detection. This can cause the API to break when connecting to non-unicode servers even though it appears to be configured to not be a unicode client.
The default C++ API version should be included with the gem source, to avoid calls to ftp.perforce.com.
Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre3
(BUG#75096 / P4RUBY-168) Spec mappings updated to 14.2 definitions.
(TASK#76795 / P4RUBY-176) Configuring pre-compiled gems for Linux and OS X, for supported Ruby versions (2.0, 2.1, 2.2).
Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre2
gem install fails using source gem distribution inside of a Docker
environment due to passive FTP mode not enabled early enough.New functionality in 2014.1
807216 (SIR#70070)
P4Ruby now supports the P4IGNORE file feature introduced in the 2013.2 server. Three new methods have been added to support this functionality:
P4#ignore_file - Report current file
P4#ignore_file= - Set ignore file
P4#ignored?( <file> ) - Test if <file> is
ignored
807216, 750979 (SIR#70093)
P4Ruby now supports the Ruby 2.0 series of rubies.
Bugs fixed in 2013.1
733921 (Bug#63887)
P4Ruby no longer crashes when an exception is raised from the block passed to P4#run_resolve.
New functionality in 2012.2
525301 (Bug #59803)
P4Ruby now supports Apple Mountain Lion (10.8).
509253 (Bug #56480)
Added P4#run_tickets() method to list local tickets. Note that P4.run('tickets') still gives the old error message "Must upgrade to 2004.2 p4 to access tickets."
505980 (Bug #56514)
Support for the new progress indicator API. P4Ruby supplies a new progress attribute, which can take an instance of P4::Progress class or subclass. Progress information is currently only supported for submits and 'sync -q'. Details can be found in the documentation.
499586 (Bug #56520)
New convenience method P4#each_<specs>() that allows easy iteration through some or all spec objects such as clients or changes. Details can be found in the documentation.
Bugs fixed in 2012.2
525097 (Bug #59786)
Building P4Ruby with MinGW could generate the link error.
g++: unrecognized option '-static-libstdc++'
This has been fixed.
505548 (Bug #58649)
P4#parse_client could raise the exception "Unknown field name 'StreamAtChange'." when parsing a stream client workspace. Internal spec definition has been updated to resolve this.
New functionality in 2012.1
419591 (Bug #51895)
P4Ruby supports SSL connections if compiled with SSL support. Instructions on how to compile with SSL support can be found at the top of this document under "Building P4Ruby from Source" and in the documentation.
P4.identify will report the version of the OpenSSL library used to build the Perforce C++ API (not the version P4Ruby is linked against).
415643
P4Ruby will now only build a 64-bit version of the library on Darwin.
413362 (Bug #51899)
Enable "action resolve" to support resolves of branches, deletes and file types. The existing P4::MergeData class has been extended and the additional attributes will be populated for an 'action resolve'. Details of the additional attributes can be found in the documentation.
Bugs fixed in 2012.1
420839 (Bug #52952)
Accessing the base_name attribute of a P4::MergeData object resulted in a segmentation fault when resolving binary files. This has now been fixed and all empty fields will return Nil.
410916, 410702 (Bug #52320)
Exceptions thrown during P4.run_resolve are now raised up to the user. If an exception is encountered during the block's execution, P4Ruby will skip the remaining files.
New functionality in 2011.1
405913
New method P4#messages() returns all messages from the server as objects. Script writers can test the severity of the messages to know if they are output messages (E_INFO), warnings (E_WARN), or errors (E_FAILED/E_FATAL).
P4#errors() and P4#warnings still return the errors and warnings as strings for backwards compatibility.
P4::Message objects have the following methods:
P4::Message#severity - Returns the severity of the message, which may be one of the following values:
E_EMPTY # nothing yet E_INFO # something good happened E_WARN # something not good happened E_FAILED # user did something wrong E_FATAL # system broken -- nothing can continue
P4::Message#generic - Returns the generic class of the error, which may be one of the following values:
EV_NONE # misc EV_USAGE # request not consistent with dox EV_UNKNOWN # using unknown entity EV_CONTEXT # using entity in wrong context EV_ILLEGAL # trying to do something you can't EV_NOTYET # something must be corrected first EV_PROTECT # protections prevented operation EV_EMPTY # action returned empty results EV_FAULT # inexplicable program fault EV_CLIENT # client side program errors EV_ADMIN # server administrative action required EV_CONFIG # client configuration inadequate EV_UPGRADE # client or server too old to interact EV_COMM # communications error EV_TOOBIG # not even Perforce can handle this much
P4::Message#msgid - Return the unique ID of the message.
P4::Message#to_s - Convert the object to a string
P4::Message#inspect - Debugging support
338410 (Bug #47374)
P4Ruby supports setting values in the registry (on those platforms that support it).
The command P4#set_env( var, val ) will set a registry variable on platforms that support this action or raise a P4Exception for those that don't.
The command P4#set_env( var, "" ) unsets a registry variable.
333292 (Bug #36121)
P4Ruby now supports Ruby 1.9
331384
P4Ruby can now be compiled with the Mingw compiler using the MinGW P4Api build.
328203 (Bug #45861)
Enable streams in P4Ruby by default. With this change, streams specific specs such as streams depots are listed. Disable the listing of streams specific specs by either setting the api_level to a value below 70 or by disabling stream handling explicitly through the P4.streams attribute:
p4.streams = false
322353 (Bug #42250)
P4Ruby supports a callback interface by providing a P4#handler attribute. Set P4#handler to an instance of a subclass of P4::OutputHandler to enable callbacks. When a handler is defined, P4Ruby will invoke the handler for every response it receives from the Perforce Server immediately instead of collecting all results together in an array first. This can be used to make applications more scalable and more responsive if large results are expected. See the documentation for details on the OutputHandler class.
Bugs fixed in 2011.1
405913 (Bug #43426)
Running 'print' on a file that started with '---' would cause an exception in Ruby. This is now fixed.
There is still an oddity when p4.track = 1 and a user runs p4.run_print() on a file that only has lines starting with '--- '. In that case, the output of the print is lost.
Disable tracking by setting p4.track = 0 (the default) will solve this problem.
405913 (Bug #41350)
Info messages now shown in P4#Messages.
385159 (Bug #49324)
On Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 2008, a client running as Administrator would fail to properly process file names in non-ASCII character sets (such as Shift-JIS).
338903 (Bug #44589)
Extra dot at the end of the extracted directory path has been removed.
338437 (Bug #39580)
P4#identify() reports the platform on AMD64 as X86_64 in line with all other Perforce products.
332453
Updated the stored spec templates for client, change, group, spec and user. Added spec template for new spec type streams. These are required, for example, for form-triggers that do not connect to the server first.
329351 (Bug #41271)
Include 'extraTag' fields in P4::Spec objects
328578 (Bug #39264)
P4#identify() now reports P4Ruby as P4RUBY in line with all other Perforce products. It will also include the build number of the Perforce C/C++ API that it is built with.
New functionality in 2010.2
260859
Added new SetTrack() and GetTrack() methods.
For more details about server performance tracking see: http://kb.perforce.com/article/883
255945, 255949, 269012
New method P4#messages() returns all messages from the server as objects. Script writers can test the severity of the messages to know if they are output messages (E_INFO), warnings (E_WARN), or errors (E_FAILED/E_FATAL).
P4#errors() and P4#warnings still return the errors and warnings as strings for backwards compatibility.
P4::Message objects have the following methods:
P4::Message#severity - Returns the severity of the
message, which may be one of the
following values:
E_EMPTY # nothing yet
E_INFO # something good happened
E_WARN # something not good happened
E_FAILED # user did something wrong
E_FATAL # system broken -- nothing can continue
P4::Message#generic - Returns the generic class of
the error, which may be one
of the following values:
EV_NONE # misc
EV_USAGE # request not consistent with dox
EV_UNKNOWN # using unknown entity
EV_CONTEXT # using entity in wrong context
EV_ILLEGAL # trying to do something you can't
EV_NOTYET # something must be corrected first
EV_PROTECT # protections prevented operation
EV_EMPTY # action returned empty results
EV_FAULT # inexplicable program fault
EV_CLIENT # client side program errors
EV_ADMIN # server administrative action required
EV_CONFIG # client configuration inadequate
EV_UPGRADE # client or server too old to interact
EV_COMM # communications error
EV_TOOBIG # not even Perforce can handle this much
P4::Message#msgid - Return the unique ID of the message.
P4::Message#to_s - Convert the object to a string
P4::Message#inspect - Debugging support
Bugs fixed in 2010.2
287185 (Bug #43426)
Running 'print' on a file that started with '---' would cause an exception in Ruby. This is now fixed. There is still an oddity when p4.track = 1 and a user runs p4.run_print() on a file that only has lines starting with '--- '. In that case, the output of the print is lost. Disable tracking by setting p4.track = 0 (the default) will solve this problem.
New functionality in 2010.1
232984
Removed old Ruby 1.6 compatibility code that was no longer required. This paves the way for Ruby 1.9 compatibility.
230644
It's now unnecessary to run a command before calling the following methods:
P4#server_level
P4#server_case_sensitive?
P4#server_unicode?
If no command has been run, P4Ruby will automatically run a 'p4 info' in order to gather the required information.
230191
Added new P4#server_unicode? method that allows script writers to test whether or not a Perforce Server is in internationalized (unicode) mode. At least one Perforce command must have been executed against the server before this method can be called.
230190
Added new P4::VERSION, P4::OS, and P4::PATCHLEVEL constants so that script writers can test the installation of P4Ruby without having to parse the output of P4::Identify()
New functionality in 2009.2
214454 (Bug #32916)
P4#port= now raises a P4Exception if called after P4#connect().
214449 (Bug #35416)
Added a P4#server_case_sensitive? method that enables scripts to detect whether the server is case-sensitive. Cannot be called until a command has been issued to the server.
Bugs fixed in 2009.2
214445,214999 (Bug #35410)
P4Ruby now correctly tracks disconnects from the server.
222727 (Bug #36568)
The Map class removed '-' and '+' from the path if the form Map.insert(lhs, rhs) was used, even if these characters did not appear at the beginning of the path. Now dashes and pluses are preserved within the path.
New functionality in 2009.1
191900 (Bug #26729)
A new method:
P4#tagged( aBool ) { block }
has been added to the P4 class. This method temporarily toggles the use of tagged output for the duration of the block and resets it when the block terminates.
Bugs fixed in 2009.1
191889 (Bug #29911)
Calling P4#run_resolve() or P4#run( 'resolve' ) without a block or a previous call to P4#input no longer causes an infinite loop.
191623,191627 (Bug #32918)
P4Ruby now correctly parses jobs when the jobspec contains field names ending in numbers.
New functionality in 2008.2
162422 (Bug #30364), 166158
A new class, P4::Map, enables users to create and use Perforce mappings without requiring a connection to a server. Methods in the P4::Map class are:
P4::Map.new Constructor
P4::Map.join Join two maps to create a third
P4::Map#clear Empty a map
P4::Map#count Return the number of entries
P4::Map#empty? Tests whether a map object is empty
P4::Map#insert Inserts an entry into the map
P4::Map#translate Translate a string through a map
P4::Map#includes? Tests whether a path is mapped
P4::Map#reverse Swap left and right sides of the mapping
P4::Map#lhs Returns the left side as an array
P4::Map#rhs Returns the right side as an array
P4::Map#to_a Returns the map as an array
Bugs fixed in 2008.2
169159 (Bug #29935, Bug #31096), 165338
P4Ruby now correctly loads the value of P4CHARSET from the environment.
New functionality in 2008.1
152356 (Bug #29022)
A new method 'P4#env( var )' method has been added to the P4 class. This instance method enables the caller to interrogate the Perforce environment, including reading Perforce variables from P4CONFIG files and, on Windows, the registry. P4#cwd= now loads any P4CONFIG file settings that are appropriate to the new working directory.
153005 (Bug #29308)
P4Ruby now supports Mac OS X 10.5.
Bugs fixed in 2007.3
151167 (Bug #28774)
The Makefile generated on some Linux platforms (notably Ubuntu 7.10) was not correct, and attempted to link P4Ruby using 'cc' instead of 'c++', causing an 'undefined symbol' error (typically '_ZTVN10cxxabiv120si_class_type_infoE') , when attempting to use P4Ruby. This problem has been corrected.
150577 (Bug #28704)
The presence of deleted revisions in a file's history might lead to incorrect fileSize and digest attributes for other revisions in the output of P4#run_filelog. This problem has been corrected.
150576 (Bug #28773)
P4::Revision#filesize() always returned nil. This problem has been corrected.
# Release Notes for P4Ruby, Perforce's script API for Ruby
Version 2015.1
## Introduction
P4Ruby is a native Ruby gem that allows you to run Perforce commands from
Ruby applications, and retrieve the results in a Ruby-friendly format.
P4Ruby is intended to work against a corresponding version of the Perforce
C++ API, e.g., P4Ruby 2014.2 will be compiled using a 2014.2 version
of the P4API. You can always install P4Ruby specifying a specific version of
the P4API.
To determine the version of your P4Ruby, and which version of the
P4API it has been built with, issue the following command:
ruby -rP4 -e "puts P4.identify"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
### Installing P4Ruby
As of 2015.1, the recommended mechanism for installing P4Ruby is via
rubygems.org.
Before installing, please take care that any older version of P4Ruby that
may have been installed outside of the Gem process is removed from your
gempath. The older installation process can not be easily removed and may
conflict with a gem-based install. Make sure that both P4.rb and P4.so (or
P4.bundle on OS X) are not available within the load path of Ruby. You can
use the `puts $:` command in `irb` to determine your current load path.
Outside of Windows, p4ruby gem installs must be compiled locally against
your installation of Ruby. If you can build the core Ruby distribution
locally, you likely can install P4Ruby without incident. On Windows,
precompiled gems are available, which already include the P4API and OpenSSL.
The main command to install p4ruby is via gem or bundler. (When using the
default system rubies from OS X or the CentOS Software Collections Library,
see 'Problems Specifying P4API' below.)
gem install p4ruby
This will download a corresponding version of the p4api from ftp.perforce.com,
and will automatically include the openssl version you have locally.
If you have downloaded the p4api and unpacked it, you can specify it using the
`--with-p4api-dir` option.
gem install p4ruby -- --with-p4api-dir=DIR
In this case, the DIR above is the path to the C++ API distribution that
should match the major and minor version of P4Ruby. If you omit the
--with-p4api-dir option, the gem will attempt to download a version of the
API itself from ftp.perforce.com.
Alternatively, you can use Bundler (http://bundler.io). In your Gemfile,
specify
gem 'p4_web_api_client', '~> 2015.1'
And then execute:
bundle --with-p4api-dir=DIR
#### Problems Specifying P4API
On older Ruby platforms, such as the default OS X or ruby193 CentOS
distributions, issues can arise when specifying the P4API directly via
the command line.
In these cases, you may need to indicate the include and lib directories
directly:
gem install p4ruby -- --with-p4api-dir=DIR \
--with-p4-api-include=DIR/include \
--with-p4-api-lib=DIR/lib
An alternative is to specify the P4API directory using the `p4api_dir`
environment variable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
### Building P4Ruby from Source on Linux or OS X
1. Download the Perforce C++ API from the Perforce FTP site at
"ftp://ftp.perforce.com/perforce". The API archive is located
in release and platform-specific subdirectories and is named
"p4api.tgz".
__IMPORTANT__: Mac OS X users MUST use the 'darwin' variant
of the Perforce API. Using the 'macos' variant
does not work.
Note: 32-bit builds of P4Ruby require a 32-bit version of the
C++ API and a 32-bit version of Ruby. 64-bit builds of
P4Ruby require a 64-bit version of the C++ API and a
64-bit version of Ruby.
Unzip the archive into an empty directory.
2. Extract the P4Ruby API archive into a new, empty directory.
3. In the p4ruby source directory, install dependencies:
bundle install
3. In the p4ruby source directory, build the gem:
p4api_dir=<absolute path to Perforce C++ API> rake compile
4. Test your distribution, which relies on a locally installed p4d.
rake test
If `p4d` is not available on your path, indicate it via the `P4D_BIN`
environment variable before running `rake test`.
5. Install P4Ruby into your local gem cache:
rake install
#### SSL support
Perforce Server 2012.1 and later supports SSL connections and the
C++ API has been compiled with this support. For applications that
do not requireSSL support the C++ API provides a stub library
(libp4sslstub.*) to satisfy the linker requirements.
If the P4Ruby build detects that OpenSSL is available, it will be
included by default. To disable, execute the gem command using
--without-ssllib. If you want to use libraries deployed to nonstandard
paths, you will have to alter ext/P4/extconf.rb and include the
dir_config() directives appropriate for your system.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
### Compatibility Statements
#### Server Compatibility
You can use any release of P4Ruby with any release of the
Perforce server later than 2001.1
You should use a version of P4Ruby built against a corresponding version
of the P4API that matches your Perforce server version. Since 2014.2,
you should try to use the same major and minor variation of P4Ruby as
used by the Perforce server. Ergo, against Perforce server version 2015.1,
you would want a P4Ruby version that starts with 2015.1.
#### API Compatibility
The 2014.2 release of P4Ruby supports the 2014.2 Perforce API.
Older releases might work but are not supported.
#### Ruby Compatibility
The 2014.2 release of P4Ruby is supported by installing the gem
with Ruby MRI releases 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 with shared library
support.
For detailed compatibility, please check the following table:
Ruby Release | P4Ruby Release
===================================
1.6 | up to 2009.2 (unsupported)
1.8 | 2007.3 or later (unsupported)
1.9 | 2011.1 or later
2.0 | 2014.1 or later
2.1 | 2015.1 or later
2.2 | 2015.1 or later
It is recommended that you use a Ruby distribution that can deploy
native gems easily, which, outside of Windows means obtaining a source
distribution of ruby and building it locally. This is easily done via RVM,
and can be installed system-wide, with other features (like wrappers) that
allow you to update the local installation of Ruby as security patches are
released. If using RVM, be sure to use --disable-binary when installing
your version of Ruby, to avoid any precompiled distributions that may not
have shared library support configured, which is needed for Ruby
extensions.
In general, Ruby VMs installed via package managers are not officially
coordinated with the MRI releases available on ruby-lang.org.
We do verify that p4ruby works with Ruby 1.9 on Debian (and Ubuntu), and
on CentOS 6 using the Software Collections Library. These are considered
"stable" distributions, and do receive security updates.
Other versions of Ruby, such as the default distribution of OS X may not
work. The default OS X Ruby is infrequently updated by Apple, and is known
to contain issues that do not seem to be patched.
#### OpenSSL Compatibility
To build P4Ruby with encrypted communication support, you must
use the version of OpenSSL that Perforce C/C++ API has been
built against. Running P4Ruby linked to an older library will
fail with the error:
"SSL library must be at least version 1.0.1."
The 2014.1 release of P4Ruby is supported with OpenSSL 1.0.1
For detailed compatibility, please check the following table:
Perforce C/C++ API Version | OpenSSL Release
============================================
2012.1 | 1.0.0
2012.2 | 1.0.1g+
2014.1 | 1.0.1g+
2015.1 | 1.0.1m+
#### Platform Compatibility
Until MinGW-w64 ports are available for the underlying Perforce C/C++
API, precompiled Windows gems are not available for p4ruby. It is possible
to generate precompiled gems; but understand that you will have to build
the P4API using the MinGW-w64 toolchain. This is a non-trivial task and
beyond the scope fo this document.
Note: As of 2012.1, a universal build of the Perforce C/C++
API is no longer available for Darwin. P4Ruby is now
a 64-bit only library on Darwin and must be built with
a 64-bit version of the Perforce C/C++ API for Darwin.
This has been tested with a universal build of Ruby and
is known to work.
#### Compiler Compatibility
To build P4Ruby from source, you must use a version of Ruby that
has been compiled with the same compiler used to build the
Perforce C++ API: for most platforms, use gcc/g++.
Attempting to use a different compiler or a different version
of the compiler causes linker errors due to differences in name
handling between compilers.
#### Compatibility with Previous Releases
Unless otherwise stated below, the 2014.1 release of P4Ruby is
compatible with previous releases from Perforce Software.
#### Known Limitations
The Perforce client-server protocol is not designed to support
multiple concurrent queries over the same connection. For this
reason, multi-threaded applications using the C++ API or the
script APIs (P4Perl, P4Ruby, etc.) should ensure that a
separate connection is used for each thread or that only one
thread may use a shared connection at a time.
## Deleted Methods
The following methods have been deleted from the `P4` class and
are no longer available:
- `output` The output is returned by the `run*` methods
- `parse_forms` Form parsing is now always on
- `tagged` See tagged? and tagged= below.
## Tagged Mode and Form Parsing
In P4Ruby, both form parsing and tagged output are on by
default.
Form parsing cannot be explicitly disabled, but tagged output can
be turned on and off by setting p4.tagged as follows:
p4.tagged = false # Disabled
p4.tagged = true # Enabled
Because form parsing does not work when tagged output is disabled,
this method can be used to disable form parsing if necessary.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
## Change overview
This document lists all user-visible changes to P4Ruby
from release 2007.3, the first supported P4Ruby release.
Perforce numbers releases YYYY.R/CCCCC, e.g. 2002.1/30547.
YYYY is the year; R is the release of that year; CCCCC is the
bug fix change level. Each bug fix in these release notes is
marked by its change number. Any build includes (1) all bug fixes
of all previous releases and (2) all bug fixes of the current
release up to the bug fix change level.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Changes in both 2015.2.0.pre0 and 2015.1.0
- Applied change to P4ClientApi::SetCharset, that if it is set to "none", then
we will ignore the setting. The P4API enviro file handling seems to always
create this setting and apply it in various circumstances.
Changes in 2015.1.0
- Updated spec mappings in specmgr.cpp to be up to date with the 2015.1 P4API
- Allow the P4_BIN environment variable to be set to point to a p4d for the
testing library (used by the `rake test` task).
New functionality in 2014.2
- (SIR#28879 / P4RUBY-25)
Release P4Ruby as Gem. Until this point, the gems available
on rubygems.org were unofficial builds, and prone to fail in
non-interactive environments like bundler.
- (SIR#75097 / P4RUBY-169)
Add `enviro_file` property to P4 object, which underneath, uses the
new `SetEnviroFile`/`GetEnviroFile` mechanism from the 14.2 C++ API.
Changes in 2014.2.0.pre6
- Documented workarounds to installation failures on the OS X default Ruby
installation.
Changes in 2014.2.0.pre5
- Fixed an issue where using the --with-p4api-dir option to gem install
would not actually set up the include and lib compilation directory
correctly.
- No longer distributing precompiled builds for linux or OS X due to
inadequate information from gem to match the Ruby distribution correctly.
- No longer embedding the C++ P4API to keep the total file size down to
allow the gem to be distributed via RubyGems.org.
- Changed logic to call p4.charset=nil if charset is already nil or resolves
to 'none'. Internally, this will trigger a call to ClientApi::SetTrans(0),
which should disable character set autodetection.
Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre4
- (BUG#77207 / P4RUBY-176)
If the user has specified 'P4CHARSET=none' in a configuration file, or
has not set p4.charset='auto' (and it's default value was initialized to
'none' by the C++ API), automatically disable character set detection.
This can cause the API to break when connecting to non-unicode servers
even though it appears to be configured to not be a unicode client.
- The default C++ API version should be included with the gem source, to
avoid calls to ftp.perforce.com.
Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre3
- (BUG#75096 / P4RUBY-168)
Spec mappings updated to 14.2 definitions.
- (TASK#76795 / P4RUBY-176)
Configuring pre-compiled gems for Linux and OS X, for supported
Ruby versions (2.0, 2.1, 2.2).
Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre2
- (BUG#76321 / P4RUBY-171)
`gem install` fails using source gem distribution inside of a Docker
environment due to passive FTP mode not enabled early enough.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2014.1
- 807216 (SIR#70070)
P4Ruby now supports the P4IGNORE file feature introduced
in the 2013.2 server. Three new methods have been added
to support this functionality:
P4#ignore_file - Report current file
P4#ignore_file= - Set ignore file
P4#ignored?( <file> ) - Test if <file> is
ignored
- 807216, 750979 (SIR#70093)
P4Ruby now supports the Ruby 2.0 series of rubies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bugs fixed in 2013.1
- 733921 (Bug#63887)
P4Ruby no longer crashes when an exception is raised from
the block passed to P4#run_resolve.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2012.2
- 525301 (Bug #59803)
P4Ruby now supports Apple Mountain Lion (10.8).
- 509253 (Bug #56480)
Added P4#run_tickets() method to list local tickets.
Note that P4.run('tickets') still gives the old error
message "Must upgrade to 2004.2 p4 to access tickets."
- 505980 (Bug #56514)
Support for the new progress indicator API. P4Ruby
supplies a new progress attribute, which can take an
instance of P4::Progress class or subclass. Progress
information is currently only supported for submits and
'sync -q'. Details can be found in the documentation.
- 499586 (Bug #56520)
New convenience method P4#each_<specs>() that allows
easy iteration through some or all spec objects such as
clients or changes. Details can be found in the documentation.
Bugs fixed in 2012.2
- 525097 (Bug #59786)
Building P4Ruby with MinGW could generate the link error.
g++: unrecognized option '-static-libstdc++'
This has been fixed.
- 505548 (Bug #58649)
P4#parse_client could raise the exception "Unknown field name
'StreamAtChange'." when parsing a stream client workspace.
Internal spec definition has been updated to resolve this.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2012.1
- 419591 (Bug #51895)
P4Ruby supports SSL connections if compiled with SSL support.
Instructions on how to compile with SSL support can be found
at the top of this document under "Building P4Ruby from Source"
and in the documentation.
P4.identify will report the version of the OpenSSL library
used to build the Perforce C++ API (not the version P4Ruby
is linked against).
- 415643
P4Ruby will now only build a 64-bit version of the library
on Darwin.
- 413362 (Bug #51899)
Enable "action resolve" to support resolves of branches,
deletes and file types. The existing P4::MergeData class
has been extended and the additional attributes will be
populated for an 'action resolve'. Details of the
additional attributes can be found in the documentation.
Bugs fixed in 2012.1
- 420839 (Bug #52952)
Accessing the base_name attribute of a P4::MergeData
object resulted in a segmentation fault when resolving
binary files. This has now been fixed and all empty
fields will return Nil.
- 410916, 410702 (Bug #52320)
Exceptions thrown during P4.run_resolve are now raised
up to the user. If an exception is encountered during the
block's execution, P4Ruby will skip the remaining files.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2011.1
- 405913
New method P4#messages() returns all messages from the
server as objects. Script writers can test the severity
of the messages to know if they are output messages (E_INFO),
warnings (E_WARN), or errors (E_FAILED/E_FATAL).
P4#errors() and P4#warnings still return the errors and
warnings as strings for backwards compatibility.
P4::Message objects have the following methods:
P4::Message#severity - Returns the severity of the
message, which may be one of the
following values:
E_EMPTY # nothing yet
E_INFO # something good happened
E_WARN # something not good happened
E_FAILED # user did something wrong
E_FATAL # system broken -- nothing can continue
P4::Message#generic - Returns the generic class of
the error, which may be one
of the following values:
EV_NONE # misc
EV_USAGE # request not consistent with dox
EV_UNKNOWN # using unknown entity
EV_CONTEXT # using entity in wrong context
EV_ILLEGAL # trying to do something you can't
EV_NOTYET # something must be corrected first
EV_PROTECT # protections prevented operation
EV_EMPTY # action returned empty results
EV_FAULT # inexplicable program fault
EV_CLIENT # client side program errors
EV_ADMIN # server administrative action required
EV_CONFIG # client configuration inadequate
EV_UPGRADE # client or server too old to interact
EV_COMM # communications error
EV_TOOBIG # not even Perforce can handle this much
P4::Message#msgid - Return the unique ID of the
message.
P4::Message#to_s - Convert the object to a string
P4::Message#inspect - Debugging support
- 338410 (Bug #47374)
P4Ruby supports setting values in the registry (on those
platforms that support it).
The command P4#set_env( var, val ) will set a registry
variable on platforms that support this action or raise
a P4Exception for those that don't.
The command P4#set_env( var, "" ) unsets a registry variable.
- 333292 (Bug #36121)
P4Ruby now supports Ruby 1.9
- 331384
P4Ruby can now be compiled with the Mingw compiler using
the MinGW P4Api build.
- 328203 (Bug #45861)
Enable streams in P4Ruby by default. With this change,
streams specific specs such as streams depots are listed.
Disable the listing of streams specific specs by either
setting the api_level to a value below 70 or by disabling
stream handling explicitly through the P4.streams attribute:
p4.streams = false
- 322353 (Bug #42250)
P4Ruby supports a callback interface by providing a
P4#handler attribute. Set P4#handler to an instance of a
subclass of P4::OutputHandler to enable callbacks.
When a handler is defined, P4Ruby will invoke the handler
for every response it receives from the Perforce Server
immediately instead of collecting all results together in
an array first. This can be used to make applications more
scalable and more responsive if large results are expected.
See the documentation for details on the OutputHandler class.
Bugs fixed in 2011.1
- 405913 (Bug #43426)
Running 'print' on a file that started with '---' would
cause an exception in Ruby. This is now fixed.
There is still an oddity when p4.track = 1 and a user runs
p4.run_print() on a file that only has lines starting with
'--- '. In that case, the output of the print is lost.
Disable tracking by setting p4.track = 0 (the default) will
solve this problem.
- 405913 (Bug #41350)
Info messages now shown in P4#Messages.
- 385159 (Bug #49324)
On Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 2008, a client running as
Administrator would fail to properly process file names in
non-ASCII character sets (such as Shift-JIS).
- 338903 (Bug #44589)
Extra dot at the end of the extracted directory path has been
removed.
- 338437 (Bug #39580)
P4#identify() reports the platform on AMD64 as X86_64
in line with all other Perforce products.
- 332453
Updated the stored spec templates for client, change, group,
spec and user. Added spec template for new spec type
streams. These are required, for example, for form-triggers
that do not connect to the server first.
- 329351 (Bug #41271)
Include 'extraTag' fields in P4::Spec objects
- 328578 (Bug #39264)
P4#identify() now reports P4Ruby as P4RUBY in line with all
other Perforce products. It will also include the build
number of the Perforce C/C++ API that it is built with.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2010.2
- 260859
Added new SetTrack() and GetTrack() methods.
For more details about server performance tracking see:
http://kb.perforce.com/article/883
- 255945, 255949, 269012
New method P4#messages() returns all messages from the
server as objects. Script writers can test the severity
of the messages to know if they are output messages (E_INFO),
warnings (E_WARN), or errors (E_FAILED/E_FATAL).
P4#errors() and P4#warnings still return the errors and
warnings as strings for backwards compatibility.
P4::Message objects have the following methods:
`P4::Message#severity` - Returns the severity of the
message, which may be one of the
following values:
E_EMPTY # nothing yet
E_INFO # something good happened
E_WARN # something not good happened
E_FAILED # user did something wrong
E_FATAL # system broken -- nothing can continue
`P4::Message#generic` - Returns the generic class of
the error, which may be one
of the following values:
EV_NONE # misc
EV_USAGE # request not consistent with dox
EV_UNKNOWN # using unknown entity
EV_CONTEXT # using entity in wrong context
EV_ILLEGAL # trying to do something you can't
EV_NOTYET # something must be corrected first
EV_PROTECT # protections prevented operation
EV_EMPTY # action returned empty results
EV_FAULT # inexplicable program fault
EV_CLIENT # client side program errors
EV_ADMIN # server administrative action required
EV_CONFIG # client configuration inadequate
EV_UPGRADE # client or server too old to interact
EV_COMM # communications error
EV_TOOBIG # not even Perforce can handle this much
`P4::Message#msgid` - Return the unique ID of the message.
`P4::Message#to_s` - Convert the object to a string
`P4::Message#inspect` - Debugging support
Bugs fixed in 2010.2
- 287185 (Bug #43426)
Running 'print' on a file that started with '---' would
cause an exception in Ruby. This is now fixed.
There is still an oddity when p4.track = 1 and a user runs
p4.run_print() on a file that only has lines starting with
'--- '. In that case, the output of the print is lost.
Disable tracking by setting p4.track = 0 (the default) will
solve this problem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2010.1
- 232984
Removed old Ruby 1.6 compatibility code that was no longer
required. This paves the way for Ruby 1.9 compatibility.
- 230644
It's now unnecessary to run a command before calling the
following methods:
P4#server_level
P4#server_case_sensitive?
P4#server_unicode?
If no command has been run, P4Ruby will automatically run a
'p4 info' in order to gather the required information.
- 230191
Added new P4#server_unicode? method that allows script
writers to test whether or not a Perforce Server is in
internationalized (unicode) mode. At least one Perforce
command must have been executed against the server before
this method can be called.
- 230190
Added new P4::VERSION, P4::OS, and P4::PATCHLEVEL constants
so that script writers can test the installation of P4Ruby
without having to parse the output of P4::Identify()
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2009.2
- 214454 (Bug #32916)
P4#port= now raises a P4Exception if called after P4#connect().
- 214449 (Bug #35416)
Added a P4#server_case_sensitive? method that enables scripts
to detect whether the server is case-sensitive. Cannot be
called until a command has been issued to the server.
Bugs fixed in 2009.2
- 214445,214999 (Bug #35410)
P4Ruby now correctly tracks disconnects from the server.
- 222727 (Bug #36568)
The Map class removed '-' and '+' from the path if the
form Map.insert(lhs, rhs) was used, even if these characters
did not appear at the beginning of the path.
Now dashes and pluses are preserved within the path.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2009.1
- 191900 (Bug #26729)
A new method:
P4#tagged( aBool ) { block }
has been added to the P4 class. This method temporarily
toggles the use of tagged output for the duration of
the block and resets it when the block terminates.
Bugs fixed in 2009.1
- 191889 (Bug #29911)
Calling P4#run_resolve() or P4#run( 'resolve' ) without
a block or a previous call to P4#input no longer causes an
infinite loop.
- 191623,191627 (Bug #32918)
P4Ruby now correctly parses jobs when the jobspec contains
field names ending in numbers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2008.2
- 162422 (Bug #30364), 166158
A new class, P4::Map, enables users to
create and use Perforce mappings without requiring
a connection to a server. Methods in the P4::Map class are:
P4::Map.new Constructor
P4::Map.join Join two maps to create a third
P4::Map#clear Empty a map
P4::Map#count Return the number of entries
P4::Map#empty? Tests whether a map object is empty
P4::Map#insert Inserts an entry into the map
P4::Map#translate Translate a string through a map
P4::Map#includes? Tests whether a path is mapped
P4::Map#reverse Swap left and right sides of the mapping
P4::Map#lhs Returns the left side as an array
P4::Map#rhs Returns the right side as an array
P4::Map#to_a Returns the map as an array
Bugs fixed in 2008.2
- 169159 (Bug #29935, Bug #31096), 165338
P4Ruby now correctly loads the value of P4CHARSET from the
environment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New functionality in 2008.1
- 152356 (Bug #29022)
A new method 'P4#env( var )' method has been added to
the P4 class. This instance method enables the caller
to interrogate the Perforce environment, including
reading Perforce variables from P4CONFIG files and,
on Windows, the registry. P4#cwd= now loads any
P4CONFIG file settings that are appropriate to the
new working directory.
- 153005 (Bug #29308)
P4Ruby now supports Mac OS X 10.5.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bugs fixed in 2007.3
- 151167 (Bug #28774)
The Makefile generated on some Linux platforms (notably
Ubuntu 7.10) was not correct, and attempted to link P4Ruby
using 'cc' instead of 'c++', causing an 'undefined symbol'
error (typically '_ZTVN10__cxxabiv120__si_class_type_infoE') ,
when attempting to use P4Ruby. This problem has been corrected.
- 150577 (Bug #28704)
The presence of deleted revisions in a file's history
might lead to incorrect fileSize and digest
attributes for other revisions in the output of
P4#run_filelog. This problem has been corrected.
- 150576 (Bug #28773)
P4::Revision#filesize() always returned nil. This
problem has been corrected.
| # | Change | User | Description | Committed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | 15524 | surajdolby |
Populate -o //guest/perforce_software/p4ruby/main/... //guest/surajdolby/p4ruby/.... |
||
| //guest/perforce_software/p4ruby/main/README.md | |||||
| #3 | 14750 | tjuricek | Add statement indicating MinGW-w64 dependency for Windows. | ||
| #2 | 14738 | tjuricek |
Update notes to indicate that CentOS ruby193 package exhibits the same mkmf bug. What happens is that the `-- --with-p4api-dir=DIR` option just doesn't set the 'lib' and 'include' subdirectories, it just uses DIR for both -L and -I directives. We are using mkmf as indicated, and this does work on patched versions of ruby. It's just that some "system rubies" are not kept up to date. |
||
| #1 | 14719 | tjuricek |
Mirroring the current state of the workshop. From this point, we will try to rebuild the history of p4-ruby in the workshop from this codeline. |
||