-----Original Message----- From: Jack Bennetto [mailto:jbennetto at smallworld.com] Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000 6:04 PM To: 'perforce-user at perforce.com' Subject: [p4] simultaneous use of files from disjoint labels?

I'm working in a situation where several disjoint projects (call them "foo" and "bar") are being developed concurrently, each with its own versioning (labels like foo-1.0 and bar-2.1). The users should be able to sync to both foo-1.0 and bar-2.1, and have the files from both on their computer.

The problem is, syncing to a "foo" label deletes all the "bar" files, and vise versa. I can't seem to get around this. I've played around with the label views, but making them all-encompassing or restricted to the files in the label. I've tried giving each it's own client spec, doing the same.

I can dream up ugly solutions (making everything writable so it doesn't get clobbered; copying files from a "client repository" to the place they are actually used), but they all seem painful and, well, ugly.

This seems like a pretty basic problem, so I keep thinking I must be either missing something simple, or looking at the whole problem wrong. How should I version a situation like this? Any suggestions?

Don't use labels. Instead use branches and change numbers. That way you can have a client view per branch and keep

any number of projects on your disk at one time without confusion. IMHO, labels aren't really a win when using

perforce and people use them because of past experience with rcs/cvs/etc. There's a lot of power in branches and

change numbers.