Summary

Integrates Hudson with Perforce SCM Repositories.
With this plugin you can use a workspace (formerly known as Clientspec in Perforce speak) that will synchronize files to the Hudson workspace. At the moment, this plugin supports:

• Polling
• Synchronizing
• Browsing latest changes
• Labeling builds (tagging)

If polling is enabled, the plugin will automatically sync to the latest revision when new changelists are found.  This will also trigger a new build.  Also, whenever a new build is triggered manually in Hudson, the plugin will sync to the latest revision in the Perforce depot.

Requirements

The plugin requires that the command line client p4 is installed on the machine running Hudson.

Usage

1. Allow the plugin to communicate with Perforce...
   1. Either create a new user or use an existing "daemon" type user
      • Note: This "daemon" user must be logged in prior to configuring or running builds with Hudson.  And you must not specify the P4CLIENT environment variable because this will overwrite anything that Hudson is trying to do.
   2. Create a workspace (clientspec) for the plugin to use.  Name it "hudson" or something.
   3. Ensure that the workspace matches your development settings for your project (e.g., LineEnd, Options, etc.)
   4. Important Note: If you will be concurrently building multiple projects from Perforce, it would be best to create a Perforce workspace for each project.
2. Install the plugin.  Download it here.
3. Create a new project, under "Source Code Management," choose Perforce.
   
4. Enter your server specific details along with the information for the user that Hudson will be using for polling/syncing.  If you are familiar with Perforce, this all should be second nature.  Remember, click on the question mark icons for context sensitive help.
    
5. Under Build Triggers, check "Poll SCM."
   
6. Save your changes and let Hudson do its job.

Post Configuration 

A new option will appear on your project's details page: "Perforce Polling Log."  You can check this to see what Perforce has been up to...

Within any build for your project, a new option appears: "Label This Build."  Click on this to see the following screen.  Here you can create a Perforce Label allowing your team to sync to this build.

Quirks

• If Hudson's copy of the project is modified outside of Perforce (say a user deletes the entire project within the workspace directory), the builds following will likely fail.  This is because the local copy is out of sync with what is in the depot.  Perforce tracks what you have sync'd via the workspace and the way to bring down files that you deleted "accidentally" is to do a "force" sync.  If this happens, you can use the option "One Time Force Sync" in the project configuration screen.  The next time a build is triggered, p4 sync will be run with the -f option.
• Perforce has specific issues when projects within a depot exist in different local locations that don't map directly to the depot.  This is precisely how Hudson operates.  To get around this requirement, we have to do some non-standard things.  Every build will grab the Perforce workspace and then modify it to suite the needs of the current Hudson project.  It then syncs the projects files and performs the build.  This means that no two projects utilizing the same Perforce workspace should be built at the same time.  It is unknown what will happen if you are synchronizing with one build, but another build attempts to modify the same Perforce workspace.  It will probably be Not Good(tm).  If builds must be performed concurrently, multiple workspaces can be used to get around this. 

Version History

 Version 1.0.12 - (5/15/2008)

• Fixed issue: 1163, Sync'ing on Hudson Slaves is now supported. Thanks go to Victor (vicsz).
• Fixed issue: 1681, Labeling builds on JVMs earlier than 1.6 were failing.

 Version 1.0.11 - (4/22/2008)

• Fixed issue: 1313, Sync'ing to Perforce labels is now supported.
• Added enhancement: 1374, Hudson user's email address is retrieved from Perforce user account if it exists.

 Version 1.0.10 - (1/26/2008)

• Fix issues: 1070, 1072, 1073/1100, 1092, 1093
  • Now supports changelists with purged files.
  • The current changelist number is available as an enviroment variable: P4_CHANGELIST. Thanks go to Eike and gerhard6.
  • Fixed changelist parsing with certain versions of Perforce, thanks go to Kiril.
  • Fixed il8n parsing of changelists, thanks go to gerhard6.
• Using the latest P4Java version, 0.7.5.

 Version 1.0.4 - (11/13/2007)

• Support for polling/sync'ing with multiple views in a single workspace
• Uses new P4Java version that supports Perforce security level 3
• Fixed issue when prior build does not have any changes

 Version 1.0.3 - (10/26/2007)

• Fixed issue where the last sync'd changelist would be lost on a restart of Hudson. This resulted in the next build after a restart being marked as containing all prior changes.
• Fixed issue with improper XML encoding of changelist history.
• Fixed issue with invalid characters in XML of changelist history.
• Fixed issue where a manual build would always be marked as failed if there were no new changes present.
• Changed validation to allow project paths that start with something other than //depot/
• Fixed problem with changelist icons not showing up on unix systems.
• Fixed NPE on first build of a new project
• Added ability to specify first change to record history from
• Added ability to use workspace with custom views specified by end user.

 Version 1.0 - (10/09/2007)

• Support for repository browsing with P4Web and Fisheye
• Support for tagging of builds (Referred to as Labels in Perforce, so that is what is used in the plugin)
• Support for doing a force sync to head (allowing Hudson to bring down all project files)
• Perforce security level 3 is supported on unix systems. Windows currently requires a workaround.
• Fixed bug on unix systems where workspace root was incorrect.
• Validation of Perforce settings is now done on configuration page.
• The Perforce workspace (clientspec) descriptions are no longer lost after a build.

 Version 0.9 - (10/04/2007)

• Production ready release.  Includes support for displaying change history. Perforce specific details, such as Jobs, are included in reporting.

 Version 0.5 - (9/29/2007)

• Initial release.  Includes support for polling and synchronizing.  Repository browsing and latest changes still to come.