Setting up Perforce Helix Core in the Cloud

Assembla is the only provider of Perforce Helix Core in the Cloud

Over 100 game and VR Studios trust us with their most important assets and code.

To purchase a Perforce repo and take advantage of these features, please contact Sales at sales@assembla.com or speak with us on the phone at (800) 405-4408.

You can create a new Perforce project in under 60 seconds. Perforce's shared version service enables teams to collaborate on important assets like software code, documents, images, and other files. Set up Perforce streams to increase agility and scalability when merging, building, and testing code.

Teams can take advantage of the power of Perforce version management combined with Assembla’s collaboration and project management features. When you sign up for Assembla’s hosted Perforce offering, you can get a complete project management toolkit for your team.

The Perforce repositories offered by Assembla provide a single Perforce stream depot. Perforce streams are designed to be a simple, convenient framework for branching and merging and are a perfect complement to the rest of Assembla’s intuitive tools. You can use any regular Perforce application, like P4V, to work with your source files. When you submit, your files are sent to the Perforce repository hosted by Assembla, where you can use code review and other tools to work with your team.

Sign up for a Portfolio + Perforce account here.

Installing and setting up Perforce in Assembla

To create a P4 repository in your Assembla project, you must first install the P4 tool in your project. To do so, simply open the project, click the green + icon, and then select Add new P4 Repository. Your Perforce repository should appear similar to the following example:

Now that you added the P4 tool in your Assembla project, you must to get a Perforce Client program. Perforce provides a command-line client, graphical client, and IDE plugins on most platforms. Download the program you prefer as all Perforce client programs are available for free download.

Once you install P4 on your computer, you'll need to make sure that you are able to connect.

Getting started with your new depot

To begin using your Perforce depot in Assembla

Using cmd, run 'p4 info' to make sure that you can connect.
Log in using 'p4 login' and your Assembla password.
Create a client for the main stream by running:
p4 client -S //depot/main -o | p4 client -i

Because your depot is new, it's empty. You can create a new code or import existing code.

Adding content

To add new content or import existing content, go to an appropriate directory in your Perforce workspace, create or copy the content, and then submit it to your Perforce repository. For example, assume you've created a workspace in the directory c:\p4\my_ws, and you want to import some code you have saved under c:\temp\code. Use the following commands on a Windows system:

cd c:\p4\my_ws
robocopy /mir c:\temp\code src
p4 reconcile src\...
p4 submit -d "importing code"

On non-Windows platforms, use:

cd ~/p4/my_ws
cp -r /tmp/code src
p4 reconcile src/...
p4 submit -d "importing code"

Troubleshooting

Receiving the Perforce error "cannot submit from non-stream client"

This error occurs when you are using a non-stream Perforce depot. Please note that Assembla's Perforce implementation works only with stream depots.

Processing hangs with large deployments

If you experience problems with large Perforce deploys, try adding the following code to your Perforce configuration file:

In the command line Perforce client: provide parameter -v rpc.bufsize=VALUE to the configuration file.
In the Perforce visual client: add a line with rpc.bufsize=VALUE to config file of P4CONFIG env variable (usually it is ~/.p4config).

Deleting a depot in my Perforce

To erase all of your commits and integration history, delete a repository by going to Admin > Tools, and then clicking the delete (trashcan) icon next to the repository. Note that this action is irreversible.

Ignoring files

Refer to the Perforce documentation regarding P4IGNORE.

Running an Assembla Perforce server in non-unicode mode

Currently changing the encoding for individual depots is not supported on Assembla On-Demand Perforce implementation, as many depots are hosted on the same server and this is a server-level setting. However, you can try to convert the I/O stream encoding by manipulating the encoding type programmatically.

Using Assembla to import a depot to preserve history

It is possible to import a depot if it is a stream depot type. If it is another type of depot, there may be some compatibility issues during conversion.

Using a Proxy server with an Assembla depot and how it affects workstation count

Unfortunately, we do not support Perforce Proxy as it cannot pass P4HOST variable, which is required for our internal routing.

Creating triggers

You cannot create triggers as a user. But Assembla can add triggers for you. Please submit your request to Support at support@assembla.com and our Operations team will take care of creating it.

Have questions? Email us support@assembla.com