Hello all.

I'm currently setting up Perforce as our replacement of our old SCM and I have a question I'd like to ask the community. It concerns how I should setup our project structure using depots or directories. Obviously there is no correct answer, just better reasons. The Perforce Users Guide shows two possibilities, but doesn't list any advantages or disadvantages to either.

Domain: For discussions sake, lets say I have a project called Widget, and it contains 3 "modules": source, documentation and (3rd party) tools. Each of these modules have different purposes. Some modules will obviously require branching (source) while others might not (docs) [note that this isn't saying that I need to be able to disable branching on docs, just that branching won't be frequent]. Tools will contain any 3rd party tools necessary to compile or run the product (e.g.: ant, jdk, tomcat, etc).

Possibility 1: One Depot/Module In this possible configuration, I would create three depots: wgt-source, wgt-docs, wgt-tps.

Possibility 2: One Depot/Project, One Dir/Module In this possible configuration, I would create one depot ("widget") and create subdirectories in the root of the depot ("source", "docs", "third_party_software").

Possibility 3: One Depot for all Projects, One Dir/project, One SubDir/Module In this possible configuration, I would only use one depot ("depot") and create directories off of the depot root for each project ("/widget", "/gomez"), and one subdirectory for each module ("/widget/source", "/widget/docs", etc).

Are there other possible configurations?

Is there a particular advantage of one configuration over the other?

As a single job might need to be applied to both source and docs, the visibility of a job is a factor. Are jobs global (visible across all depots) or are they visible to a single depot?

One thing that all configurations allow is a user to create a client workspace that shows only the module that the user is interested in. For example, if John is a documentation guy (and thus only wants to see the documentation), in the first possibility, his view would be: //wgt-docs/... //clientws_john/... And in the first possibility, John's view would be something like this: //widget/docs/... //clientws_john/... And finally, in the third possibility, the view would be: //depot/widget/docs/... //clientws_john/... So obviously this isn't a deciding factor.

What other deciding factors might there be, besides job visibility and reduced view?

To those who answer, thanks for your time and opinions -- very much appreciated.

JDG