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Perforce is quickly becoming the de facto product for source control or software configuration management (SCM) in the video game industry. It's so ubiquitous, in fact, that one may have a hard time finding software developers-small and large-who aren't using it. The reason is Perforce is fast, reliable, and evolving.
Version 2006.1 holds several new features, including Visual Studio 8.0 integration, RSS feeds through the web client, upgrades to its branching and merging system, and new plug-in extensions for digital content creation tools. What used to be the purview of software engineers and their source code is now being used for digital assets, development auditing, production management, and automating development tasks.
SCM Tools
Perforce is based on a client/server model. The server software runs on most major systems including Unix/Linux and Windows. It contains the file repository with version and history information. A single person can maintain the Perforce server even in a large development environment. Administrative tasks include user and client maintenance, permissions/protections, backup and recovery, and performance tuning.
The client software includes command line and graphical tools. The Perforce Visual Client, P4V, is an updated cross-platform GUI which replaces the Windows Client, P4Win. P4V provides a consistent graphical interface on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD. It provides the controls for all client-side operations including check-in, check-out operations.
A new Time-lapse View tool lets you quickly flip through file revisions via a slider-an invaluable tool for tracking down code changes-and a custom tool interface allows new tools and scripts to be added easily to P4V.
P4Merge, the visual merge tool, gives the user the ability...