-----Original Message----- From: Rene R. Medellin [mailto:medellre at yahoo.com] Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 2:01 PM To: Robert MacMunn; Davidson, Giles; Paula Ward; perforce-user at perforce.com Subject: RE: [p4] Perforce Evaluation

"No user admin" with ClearCase eh? I'll have to respectfully disagree with that. I'm gonna guess that you have a team of sysadmins that administer your license server, registry server, vob and view server.

What you describe has nothing to do with "user admin" You don't have to add users in Clearcase as you do in Perforce. Administrate the license server ? Ho often do you have to do that.

You have to admin depots as you do vobs.

No? If running in a heterogenous environment then you gotta worry about Samba too. You need somebody to create the VOBs, maybe put triggers on, if you're

You also have to create depots and triggers in Perforce.

using Defect Tracking work on the integration scripts with ClearQuest or TestDirector or whatever... Not to mention the time spent on putting together internal training materials to explain to people what a "View" and a "Config Spec" are and what a dynamic view is vs. a snapshot view and creating regions and creating views and making sure people have the right config_spec and oh yeah, making sure people in Windows have a view-tag for their view and their VOB and... and.. and... PHEW. I'd forgotten how much *FUN* supporting ClearCase was... 8 )

You have to do the same thing in Perforce, explain what a client spec is instead of a config spec. Explain that you have to clear out your files if you want to trust the sync. Put internal materials together to explain how to use Perforce. Merging in Perforce gets dicey also if you have many nested branches.

I'll also have to disagree with the suggestion that a ClearCase build running inside a dynamic view (or even from a snapshot view) is faster than sync'ing code out of perforce. I've seen java builds of about 7000-8000 files take anywhere from 2 to 8 hours, depending on how well MVFS and View/Vob servers were configured (the network Gods willing, of course). Pulling an equal set of files out of the VOB through a snapshot view is nowhere near as fast as P4. Specially if you're at a different site than from where the main cod repository is (oh and don't even get me started on MultiSite)

I have used Perforce at 2 places where multiple builds run at the same time. When 3 or more builds started to sync, it brought Perforce to its knees. Talk about needing to configure. Perforce sent us email after email asking us to configure the kernel this way and that way. How about running multiple builds on the same machine at the same time. Difficult. You need to have separate download areas for the sync. Then you have to make sure you have the P4 variable set correctly. Also Perforce support is only available 8-5 PACIFIC time, forget the East coast. Ever come in in the morning and have a problem with your Perforce server and have to wait until 11:00 Easter to get into Support.

I battled ClearCase for about 5 years and just totally love P4. It's light, fast and very specific to its purpose. It sorta adheres to the guiding principle in the majority of UNIX utilities: do a simple job, simply and efficiently. Yeah, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of its more "prestigious" competitor but in my previous lives, I've yet to see an organisation that makes full or even 70% of a realisation of the so-called "potential" of ClearCase.

Respectfully submitted (and pedantically opinionated),

Rene Medellin Release Engineer, MarketAxess Inc.

--- Robert MacMunn <RobertMacMunn at crd.com> wrote: