p4 changelist cheatsheet

A changelist in Perforce is identified by an unique number and contains a list of modified files and a description (among other things). When you inform Perforce that you have created a file, deleted a file or modified a file, such changed files are by default added to a default changelist that has no changelist number.

• To create a changelist by grabbing the files in the current default changelist:

$ p4 change

This opens your default editor to a temporary text file showing an empty description and the list of files from the default changelist. You have to use the editor and provide a description. If you do not want some of the files to be in the changelist you are creating, you can delete those lines in the editor. Once you save the file, the changelist is created with a unique number identifying it. After this command ends, p4 prints out its changelist number, say 123456.

Note that this command moves all the files in the default changelist to the new changelist you created. That is, unless you removed a few of them while creating the changelist.

• To view all the details of an existing changelist 123456:

$ p4 change -o 123456

• To move a file on the filesystem to an existing changelist 123456:

$ p4 reopen -c 123456 joe/foobar.cpp

• To move a file from an existing changelist 123456 to the default changelist:

$ p4 reopen -c default joe/foobar.cpp

Description

• To view the description of a changelist:

$ p4 describe 123456

• To edit the description of an existing changelist 123456:

$ p4 change -u 123456

Shelve

• To shelve the files from a changelist 123456:

$ p4 shelve -c 123456

• To list the files in a shelved changelist 123456:

$ p4 describe -s -S 123456

• To update a shelved changelist 123456 with newly updated files from disk:

$ p4 shelve -f -c 123456

Note that there might be files that are present in the shelve but not present in the pending changelist. This operation will not touch those file in the shelve and those files will continue to exist in the shelve.

• To replace a shelved changelist 123456 from the pending changelist:

$ p4 shelve -r -c 123456

Note how this is different from the -f option. This operation completely replaces the current shelve with the pending changelist. After this operation the shelve and the pending changelist will be perfect replicas of each other. Files that were present in the shelve and not in the pending changelist will be lost.

• To update a shelved file with a particular changed file from disk:

$ p4 shelve -f -c 123456 foobar.cpp

• To delete the shelved files of a changelist:

$ p4 shelve -d -c 123456

• To delete a few files from a shelved changelist 123456:

$ p4 shelve -d -c 123456 joe/foo.cpp joe/foo.h

Unshelve

• To unshelve the files that were shelved from a changelist 123456 back to the same changelist:

$ p4 unshelve -s 123456 -c 123456

• To unshelve the files that were shelved from a changelist 123456 back to a different changelist 789012:

$ p4 unshelve -s 123456 -c 789012

• To unshelve the files that were shelved from a changelist 123456 back to the default changelist:

$ p4 unshelve -s 123456

Submit

• To create a changelist from the default changelist and submit it to your branch in the depot:

$ p4 submit

• To submit a changelist 123456 to your branch in the depot:

$ p4 submit -c 123456