Practical Perforce: Channeling the Flow of Change in Software Development Collaboration

Practical Perforce does a great job at explaining the specifics of why Perforce has so many options and features. If you use Perforce (or any other SCM for that matter) you should pick this book up. About 40% of the book explains the exact Perforce commands, but other 60% gives you real life applications for any SCM that will support specific features (i.e.: branching, merging, and live distribution). For me it became another angle on the SCM scene. This book's methods can be merged and augmented to existing SCM schemes and processes. Great read for the novice and an asset to the veteran.

I love Perforce, but I'm not a big fan of their documentation. What little material they have on proper use of Perforce is terse and mainly impenetrable. This book really digs into how to manage branches and shows how to use Perforce in real world situations, like freezing branches, then applying patches. That stuff can be tough and mistakes are costly. That's why I say that this is the book that will save your ass.

The book provides a thorough, yet highly readable education on how to use Perforce effectively. The writing style is easy to follow, the book is well edited and clearly laid out, and the examples are well-chosen and meaningful. One thing I found particularly nice about this book is that it appeals both to the Perforce expert, as well as to the Perforce beginner. Experts will appreciate the clear explanation of the underlying details, while more casual users will find numerous hints, tips, and recipes that they can put to use immediately. I think this book is even useful to non-Perforce users, specifically for the chapters which discuss some of the underlying philosophy of source code control and configuration management, such as the mainline model, the flow of change, and the ideas on how to integrate source code control into your overall software development organization.

This is an excellent book on Perforce but is more than that since it contains some very useful ideas on branching and the "Flow of Change" which apply to all SCM tools. Laura writes very clearly and in an engaging style. It is particularly good on explaining lots of details of how to do branching and merging which is an area a lot of people initially have trouble with. It goes on to identify a variety of scenarios and how to address them that will be invaluable to many people. I have been working with Perforce since 1997 and provide consultancy and training in the tool and still learnt a number of new things from this book. In particular I will be "borrowing" some of the ways of explaining that Laura uses! My only quibble is the focus on the use of the command line which might put some people off. Don't let it - if you use Perforce you need this book!

While Perforce is a very flexible SCM system that allows you to run your projects in pretty much any conceivable configuration, it can be daunting deciding on which to use. This book provides a great practical way to setup and use Perforce. In particular, the last section contains specific examples on setting up branches and how to safely integrate between them. If you use Perforce, keep this book handy.