git-p4 issue

git-p4 issue

[Michael Horowitz]

Hello,

I ran into an issue with git-p4 and was given a fix described below by
someone assisting me, but I am not a Python developer...

...
By looking at the git-p4 code turns out that in the prepareLogMessage
function, everything between the Description and Files section of the
p4 change specification is skipped. The Jobs section happens to be
between Description and Files...

Good thing the fix is simple, in the prepareLogMessage function, just add this:

    if inDescriptionSection:
-       if line.startswith("Files:"):
+       if line.startswith("Files:") or line.startswith("Jobs:"):

And you should now see your jobs appear in the p4 change specification.
...

Given the simple nature of it, I was hoping someone could help get
this fixed in the main git distro.

-- 
Mike

git-p4 issue

[Michael Horowitz]

Pete,

I was hoping you could help me out again.  After using git-p4 for a
while without a problem, it has suddenly stopped working for me.  I am
using the latest master.  I haven't seen any recent changes that I
think could have caused this, but maybe you'll have some insight.

The issue is that when I do a git-p4 sync on my existing repository,
it reports success, but seems to do nothing.  It does not download the
latest changes from p4.  If I delete my repository and start over, it
will download all the latest changes, even the ones it was not
downloading previously, but if I try to sync again later, it does not
do anything.  I tried running it with the "--verbose" mode, and I see
it says it is loading each of the changes, but they are not ending up
in the git repository, and it is not reporting any errors.

Any ideas of what this could be?  Is there anything else I can run to
help debug this?

Thanks,

Mike

Re: git-p4 issue

[Tor Arvid Lund]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Michael Horowitz
<michael.horowitz@ieee.org> wrote:
> Pete,
>
> I was hoping you could help me out again.  After using git-p4 for a
> while without a problem, it has suddenly stopped working for me.  I am
> using the latest master.  I haven't seen any recent changes that I
> think could have caused this, but maybe you'll have some insight.
>
> The issue is that when I do a git-p4 sync on my existing repository,
> it reports success, but seems to do nothing.  It does not download the
> latest changes from p4.  If I delete my repository and start over, it
> will download all the latest changes, even the ones it was not
> downloading previously, but if I try to sync again later, it does not
> do anything.  I tried running it with the "--verbose" mode, and I see
> it says it is loading each of the changes, but they are not ending up
> in the git repository, and it is not reporting any errors.

Hi, Michael.

Is it possible that you expect that 'git p4 sync' should update your
working branch and/or working tree? Assuming a simple clone with a
local master branch, running 'git-p4 sync' will update the branch
remotes/p4/master, but it won't do anything on my working master
branch...

Maybe you want to call 'git rebase p4/master' afterwards, or use the
shorthand 'git p4 rebase' to do a sync+rebase.

Regards,
Tor Arvid.

> Any ideas of what this could be?  Is there anything else I can run to
> help debug this?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>

Re: git-p4 issue

[Michael Horowitz]

I am sure that is a common mistake people make, but not in this case.
I have been using it successfully for a while now, it just suddenly
stopped working, not sure what changed.  I am not seeing anything on
remotes/p4/master either, and I was originally doing rebase and went
back to sync so I could run "--verbose" and see if it was even
downloading those changes.  I can clearly see it says it is
downloading them, but then they just don't end up in git.

Since I don't see an error message about it failing to sync, I am at a
loss to figure out why it says it succeeded, but it didn't.  Could
there be one step in the code that is not catching an error condition?
 I am not all that familiar with Python, but if someone could point me
where to put some debug messages, I can do some testing.

Thanks,

Mike



On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Tor Arvid Lund <torarvid@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Michael Horowitz
> <michael.horowitz@ieee.org> wrote:
> > Pete,
> >
> > I was hoping you could help me out again.  After using git-p4 for a
> > while without a problem, it has suddenly stopped working for me.  I am
> > using the latest master.  I haven't seen any recent changes that I
> > think could have caused this, but maybe you'll have some insight.
> >
> > The issue is that when I do a git-p4 sync on my existing repository,
> > it reports success, but seems to do nothing.  It does not download the
> > latest changes from p4.  If I delete my repository and start over, it
> > will download all the latest changes, even the ones it was not
> > downloading previously, but if I try to sync again later, it does not
> > do anything.  I tried running it with the "--verbose" mode, and I see
> > it says it is loading each of the changes, but they are not ending up
> > in the git repository, and it is not reporting any errors.
>
> Hi, Michael.
>
> Is it possible that you expect that 'git p4 sync' should update your
> working branch and/or working tree? Assuming a simple clone with a
> local master branch, running 'git-p4 sync' will update the branch
> remotes/p4/master, but it won't do anything on my working master
> branch...
>
> Maybe you want to call 'git rebase p4/master' afterwards, or use the
> shorthand 'git p4 rebase' to do a sync+rebase.
>
> Regards,
> Tor Arvid.
>
> > Any ideas of what this could be?  Is there anything else I can run to
> > help debug this?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Mike
> > --
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> >

Re: git-p4 issue

[Pete Wyckoff]

michael.horowitz@ieee.org wrote on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:39 -0400:
> I am sure that is a common mistake people make, but not in this case.
> I have been using it successfully for a while now, it just suddenly
> stopped working, not sure what changed.  I am not seeing anything on
> remotes/p4/master either, and I was originally doing rebase and went
> back to sync so I could run "--verbose" and see if it was even
> downloading those changes.  I can clearly see it says it is
> downloading them, but then they just don't end up in git.
> 
> Since I don't see an error message about it failing to sync, I am at a
> loss to figure out why it says it succeeded, but it didn't.  Could
> there be one step in the code that is not catching an error condition?
>  I am not all that familiar with Python, but if someone could point me
> where to put some debug messages, I can do some testing.

It would say something if it failed.  If git-p4 says it brought
in changes, they would appear at the top of p4/master, or another
branch in remotes/p4 if you use git-p4's auto-branch feature.

Do "git branch -av".  You should see remotes/p4/master with the
latest p4 change.

It is possible to create a branch "p4/master" that is not
remotes/p4/master and possibly cause confusion.  "tree -a
.git/refs" to see all your branches.

You can try "git fsck" to see if something is terribly wrong.
Or nose around .git, see if there are some recently-created
objects and use "git cat-file -p" to look at them.

If you are willing to tar up your .git and leave it somewhere,
I can take a look too.

		-- Pete

> Thanks,
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Tor Arvid Lund <torarvid@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Michael Horowitz
> > <michael.horowitz@ieee.org> wrote:
> > > Pete,
> > >
> > > I was hoping you could help me out again.  After using git-p4 for a
> > > while without a problem, it has suddenly stopped working for me.  I am
> > > using the latest master.  I haven't seen any recent changes that I
> > > think could have caused this, but maybe you'll have some insight.
> > >
> > > The issue is that when I do a git-p4 sync on my existing repository,
> > > it reports success, but seems to do nothing.  It does not download the
> > > latest changes from p4.  If I delete my repository and start over, it
> > > will download all the latest changes, even the ones it was not
> > > downloading previously, but if I try to sync again later, it does not
> > > do anything.  I tried running it with the "--verbose" mode, and I see
> > > it says it is loading each of the changes, but they are not ending up
> > > in the git repository, and it is not reporting any errors.
> >
> > Hi, Michael.
> >
> > Is it possible that you expect that 'git p4 sync' should update your
> > working branch and/or working tree? Assuming a simple clone with a
> > local master branch, running 'git-p4 sync' will update the branch
> > remotes/p4/master, but it won't do anything on my working master
> > branch...
> >
> > Maybe you want to call 'git rebase p4/master' afterwards, or use the
> > shorthand 'git p4 rebase' to do a sync+rebase.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Tor Arvid.
> >
> > > Any ideas of what this could be?  Is there anything else I can run to
> > > help debug this?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Mike
> > > --
> > > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> > > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > >
> 

Re: git-p4 issue

[Vitor Antunes]

Hi Pete and Michael,

Pete Wyckoff <pw <at> padd.com> writes:

> 
> michael.horowitz <at> ieee.org wrote on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:39 -0400:
> > I am sure that is a common mistake people make, but not in this case.
> > I have been using it successfully for a while now, it just suddenly
> > stopped working, not sure what changed.  I am not seeing anything on
> > remotes/p4/master either, and I was originally doing rebase and went
> > back to sync so I could run "--verbose" and see if it was even
> > downloading those changes.  I can clearly see it says it is
> > downloading them, but then they just don't end up in git.

I've seen similar behavior when branch detection is enabled. Could it be that
the new changelists are not being imported because they are under a folder that
is not part of the path provided to git-p4 sync (or automatically detected by
it) during the original import? That would explain why --verbose shows the
changelists being downloaded but then they are not imported.

You said that if you clone the depot again you see the new changes. Could you
please confirm if "depot_paths" value is the same in git-log of both git repos?

> > Since I don't see an error message about it failing to sync, I am at a
> > loss to figure out why it says it succeeded, but it didn't.  Could
> > there be one step in the code that is not catching an error condition?
> >  I am not all that familiar with Python, but if someone could point me
> > where to put some debug messages, I can do some testing.
> 
> It would say something if it failed.  If git-p4 says it brought
> in changes, they would appear at the top of p4/master, or another
> branch in remotes/p4 if you use git-p4's auto-branch feature.
> 
> Do "git branch -av".  You should see remotes/p4/master with the
> latest p4 change.
> 
> It is possible to create a branch "p4/master" that is not
> remotes/p4/master and possibly cause confusion.  "tree -a
> .git/refs" to see all your branches.
> 
> You can try "git fsck" to see if something is terribly wrong.
> Or nose around .git, see if there are some recently-created
> objects and use "git cat-file -p" to look at them.
> 
> If you are willing to tar up your .git and leave it somewhere,
> I can take a look too.
> 
> 		-- Pete


Vitor

Re: git-p4 issue

[Michael Horowitz]

OK, after some digging, I think I have figured out what is going on,
but I am not sure how to fix it, at least not safely.

There seem to be several different ways of detecting branches, and I
am not exactly sure what they are all used for, or why there are so
many, but the core of the issue I am having is that in importChanges
when it calls splitFilesIntoBranches, it assumes "self.knownBranches"
has all the branches, even though it already has the branches from
"self.p4BranchesInGit".  The exact reason I don't know, but the
results is splitFilesIntoBranches returns an empty array, and so when
the code loops over it, it silently does nothing.

The first fix that would be helpful is to at least report an error if
it can't find the branches, rather than silently doing nothing.  I am
not exactly sure why it needs to look in "self.knownBranches", so I
don't know what the error should report, maybe the error should be
reported earlier?

The other issue is how "self.knownBranches" seems to be populated.  It
looks like form my code path, which decides to "Import from/to
multiple branches", it tries to detect branches by using "p4
branches".  Again, this is odd, since I can see it already has the
names of the branches from "self.p4BranchesInGit".  I am not familiar
enough with the code (and figuring out Python as I go along) to know
why.  The problem with using "p4 branches" is those aren't really
branches, they are aliases to a merge command (integrate in p4 lingo)
which stores the from and to branch.  The branch in Perforce is really
just a directory.  Interestingly enough, it seems this logic also
attempts to detect new branches and automatically import them, but
ironically this doesn't actually work for me.

So, the crux of the problem is that "p4 branches" are not necessary to
have at all.  The reason this suddenly stopped working for me is that
someone had created one of these branch definitions and I didn't know,
so it was accidentally working all this time, but only for 2 of the
branches.  Then the person removed the definition, and it stopped
working.  Now the workaround is to go and create these things for
every branch, but considering these are unnecessary and cumbersome to
create, and the code seems to be able to find the branches already
from the "self.p4BranchesInGit" anyway, I would like to remove the
dependency on that logic.

Now, I could go ahead and hack something that does things differently,
but since I don't really know the intention of these structures or how
it might impact elsewhere in the code, I could use some guidance from
someone who knows this code well.

Thanks,

Mike




On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Michael Horowitz
<michael.horowitz@ieee.org> wrote:
> I am sure that is a common mistake people make, but not in this case.
> I have been using it successfully for a while now, it just suddenly
> stopped working, not sure what changed.  I am not seeing anything on
> remotes/p4/master either, and I was originally doing rebase and went
> back to sync so I could run "--verbose" and see if it was even
> downloading those changes.  I can clearly see it says it is
> downloading them, but then they just don't end up in git.
>
> Since I don't see an error message about it failing to sync, I am at a
> loss to figure out why it says it succeeded, but it didn't.  Could
> there be one step in the code that is not catching an error condition?
>  I am not all that familiar with Python, but if someone could point me
> where to put some debug messages, I can do some testing.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Tor Arvid Lund <torarvid@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Michael Horowitz
>> <michael.horowitz@ieee.org> wrote:
>> > Pete,
>> >
>> > I was hoping you could help me out again.  After using git-p4 for a
>> > while without a problem, it has suddenly stopped working for me.  I am
>> > using the latest master.  I haven't seen any recent changes that I
>> > think could have caused this, but maybe you'll have some insight.
>> >
>> > The issue is that when I do a git-p4 sync on my existing repository,
>> > it reports success, but seems to do nothing.  It does not download the
>> > latest changes from p4.  If I delete my repository and start over, it
>> > will download all the latest changes, even the ones it was not
>> > downloading previously, but if I try to sync again later, it does not
>> > do anything.  I tried running it with the "--verbose" mode, and I see
>> > it says it is loading each of the changes, but they are not ending up
>> > in the git repository, and it is not reporting any errors.
>>
>> Hi, Michael.
>>
>> Is it possible that you expect that 'git p4 sync' should update your
>> working branch and/or working tree? Assuming a simple clone with a
>> local master branch, running 'git-p4 sync' will update the branch
>> remotes/p4/master, but it won't do anything on my working master
>> branch...
>>
>> Maybe you want to call 'git rebase p4/master' afterwards, or use the
>> shorthand 'git p4 rebase' to do a sync+rebase.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Tor Arvid.
>>
>> > Any ideas of what this could be?  Is there anything else I can run to
>> > help debug this?
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> >
>> > Mike
>> > --
>> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
>> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>> >
>

Re: git-p4 issue

[Vitor Antunes]

Hi Mike,

Could you please search for the following set of patches in this mailing list?

[PATCH v2 0/3] git-p4: Improve branch support

I think I sent v2 twice somehow, so please make sure you pick the latest ;)
In these patches I add the possibility to use a "git-p4.branchList"
configuration to define the branches. The patch is still to be approved because
most people in the mailing list do not use branch detection, but I use it daily
and it is working in my side. Could you please test it?

Thanks,
Vitor

P.S. - It's better that you do not apply "[PATCH v2 1/3] git-p4: Correct branch
base depot path detection", as it may require you to clone the all depot again.

Re: git-p4 issue

[Pete Wyckoff]

michael.horowitz@ieee.org wrote on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:57 -0400:
> OK, after some digging, I think I have figured out what is going on,
> but I am not sure how to fix it, at least not safely.
> 
> There seem to be several different ways of detecting branches, and I
> am not exactly sure what they are all used for, or why there are so
> many, but the core of the issue I am having is that in importChanges
> when it calls splitFilesIntoBranches, it assumes "self.knownBranches"
> has all the branches, even though it already has the branches from
> "self.p4BranchesInGit".  The exact reason I don't know, but the
> results is splitFilesIntoBranches returns an empty array, and so when
> the code loops over it, it silently does nothing.

I too am confused by the branch handling in git-p4, and have never
used it.  I'd love to rip it all out, along with the confusion,
but know that some people use it with success.

At least it all could use some overhaul and documentation so we
can see what's going on.

> The first fix that would be helpful is to at least report an error if
> it can't find the branches, rather than silently doing nothing.  I am
> not exactly sure why it needs to look in "self.knownBranches", so I
> don't know what the error should report, maybe the error should be
> reported earlier?
> 
> The other issue is how "self.knownBranches" seems to be populated.  It
> looks like form my code path, which decides to "Import from/to
> multiple branches", it tries to detect branches by using "p4
> branches".  Again, this is odd, since I can see it already has the
> names of the branches from "self.p4BranchesInGit".  I am not familiar
> enough with the code (and figuring out Python as I go along) to know
> why.  The problem with using "p4 branches" is those aren't really
> branches, they are aliases to a merge command (integrate in p4 lingo)
> which stores the from and to branch.  The branch in Perforce is really
> just a directory.  Interestingly enough, it seems this logic also
> attempts to detect new branches and automatically import them, but
> ironically this doesn't actually work for me.

This is my understanding of "p4 branch" as well.  At our site,
the list of p4 branches does not at all correspond to what we
think of as code development branches in git.  Again, maybe
others use it differently?

We do maintain p4 view lists, but that is kept out-of-band, not
in any p4 mechanism.  These map friendlier short names to a list
of directories in p4 and how to assemble those into a workspace.

> So, the crux of the problem is that "p4 branches" are not necessary to
> have at all.  The reason this suddenly stopped working for me is that
> someone had created one of these branch definitions and I didn't know,
> so it was accidentally working all this time, but only for 2 of the
> branches.  Then the person removed the definition, and it stopped
> working.  Now the workaround is to go and create these things for
> every branch, but considering these are unnecessary and cumbersome to
> create, and the code seems to be able to find the branches already
> from the "self.p4BranchesInGit" anyway, I would like to remove the
> dependency on that logic.
> 
> Now, I could go ahead and hack something that does things differently,
> but since I don't really know the intention of these structures or how
> it might impact elsewhere in the code, I could use some guidance from
> someone who knows this code well.

Vitor uses branches, and his patch that he recommends might be
the work-around you are looking for.

I thought all this branch code was opt-in, so if you fail to say
"--detect-branches", it won't try to auto-detect anything.

But there is maybe another use case in here, which is to
import multiple directories of the depot into _different_
refs/remotes/p4/<branch>.  (I've only ever done one at a
time, and into the default p4/master.)  And now that you
have multiple git-p4 branches, you're stuck with them due to the
login in p4BranchesInGit().  That feature should be handled
independently of the "p4 branch" auto-detection one.

The branch handling needs rework.  You might help by describing
how you want it to work and we can see if this is the same as how
Vitor uses branches.

		-- Pete

Re: git-p4 issue

[Michael Horowitz]

I don't have a problem with the branch detection if other people use
it in ways I don't, but it would be nice to have more options and
documentation around it.

The best I can do to describe what I want is for it to use what is
returned by "git-p4 branches", at minimum.  If there is some optional
additional "new branch detection" logic, I don't have a problem with
that, but that should only be in addition to the branches it already
knows about from "git-p4 branches".  So, when I do a "git-p4 sync" or
"git-p4 rebase", and it is importing changes from/to multiple
branches, then it should get that list of branches using the same
method "git-p4 branches" uses.  Does that make sense?

Thanks,

Mike



On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Pete Wyckoff <pw@padd.com> wrote:
>
> michael.horowitz@ieee.org wrote on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:57 -0400:
> > OK, after some digging, I think I have figured out what is going on,
> > but I am not sure how to fix it, at least not safely.
> >
> > There seem to be several different ways of detecting branches, and I
> > am not exactly sure what they are all used for, or why there are so
> > many, but the core of the issue I am having is that in importChanges
> > when it calls splitFilesIntoBranches, it assumes "self.knownBranches"
> > has all the branches, even though it already has the branches from
> > "self.p4BranchesInGit".  The exact reason I don't know, but the
> > results is splitFilesIntoBranches returns an empty array, and so when
> > the code loops over it, it silently does nothing.
>
> I too am confused by the branch handling in git-p4, and have never
> used it.  I'd love to rip it all out, along with the confusion,
> but know that some people use it with success.
>
> At least it all could use some overhaul and documentation so we
> can see what's going on.
>
> > The first fix that would be helpful is to at least report an error if
> > it can't find the branches, rather than silently doing nothing.  I am
> > not exactly sure why it needs to look in "self.knownBranches", so I
> > don't know what the error should report, maybe the error should be
> > reported earlier?
> >
> > The other issue is how "self.knownBranches" seems to be populated.  It
> > looks like form my code path, which decides to "Import from/to
> > multiple branches", it tries to detect branches by using "p4
> > branches".  Again, this is odd, since I can see it already has the
> > names of the branches from "self.p4BranchesInGit".  I am not familiar
> > enough with the code (and figuring out Python as I go along) to know
> > why.  The problem with using "p4 branches" is those aren't really
> > branches, they are aliases to a merge command (integrate in p4 lingo)
> > which stores the from and to branch.  The branch in Perforce is really
> > just a directory.  Interestingly enough, it seems this logic also
> > attempts to detect new branches and automatically import them, but
> > ironically this doesn't actually work for me.
>
> This is my understanding of "p4 branch" as well.  At our site,
> the list of p4 branches does not at all correspond to what we
> think of as code development branches in git.  Again, maybe
> others use it differently?
>
> We do maintain p4 view lists, but that is kept out-of-band, not
> in any p4 mechanism.  These map friendlier short names to a list
> of directories in p4 and how to assemble those into a workspace.
>
> > So, the crux of the problem is that "p4 branches" are not necessary to
> > have at all.  The reason this suddenly stopped working for me is that
> > someone had created one of these branch definitions and I didn't know,
> > so it was accidentally working all this time, but only for 2 of the
> > branches.  Then the person removed the definition, and it stopped
> > working.  Now the workaround is to go and create these things for
> > every branch, but considering these are unnecessary and cumbersome to
> > create, and the code seems to be able to find the branches already
> > from the "self.p4BranchesInGit" anyway, I would like to remove the
> > dependency on that logic.
> >
> > Now, I could go ahead and hack something that does things differently,
> > but since I don't really know the intention of these structures or how
> > it might impact elsewhere in the code, I could use some guidance from
> > someone who knows this code well.
>
> Vitor uses branches, and his patch that he recommends might be
> the work-around you are looking for.
>
> I thought all this branch code was opt-in, so if you fail to say
> "--detect-branches", it won't try to auto-detect anything.
>
> But there is maybe another use case in here, which is to
> import multiple directories of the depot into _different_
> refs/remotes/p4/<branch>.  (I've only ever done one at a
> time, and into the default p4/master.)  And now that you
> have multiple git-p4 branches, you're stuck with them due to the
> login in p4BranchesInGit().  That feature should be handled
> independently of the "p4 branch" auto-detection one.
>
> The branch handling needs rework.  You might help by describing
> how you want it to work and we can see if this is the same as how
> Vitor uses branches.
>
>                -- Pete

Re: git-p4 issue

[Vitor Antunes]

Hi Mike,

Michael Horowitz <michael.horowitz <at> ieee.org> writes:

> I don't have a problem with the branch detection if other people use
> it in ways I don't, but it would be nice to have more options and
> documentation around it.

Yes, documentation is a bit scarce. And looking again at my patch the
description text also does not seem quite good enough.

> The best I can do to describe what I want is for it to use what is
> returned by "git-p4 branches", at minimum. If there is some optional
> additional "new branch detection" logic, I don't have a problem with
> that, but that should only be in addition to the branches it already
> knows about from "git-p4 branches". So, when I do a "git-p4 sync" or
> "git-p4 rebase", and it is importing changes from/to multiple
> branches, then it should get that list of branches using the same
> method "git-p4 branches" uses. Does that make sense?

I think I understand your point and it may make sense. Currently,
"self.knownBranches" is the list used during import from P4. The idea
behind making this list different from "self.p4BranchesInGit" might have
been to allow stop following a given branch by removing its definition
from P4. Of course, if you already imported it earlier and there is a
commit into it I think it makes sense to import the new commit instead
of ignoring it as it is being done now. With that said, I think it would
be a good idea to somehow merge the two lists together. But, as Pete
already pointed out, the branch code is too complex as it is now and it
needs a deep review. So it might make sense to include this feature as
part of that review.

The patch I directed you to ([1]) allows you to create a list of
branch-origin to branch-destination pairs independent of "p4 branches"
output. So you should be able to use this as a workaround for now.

> Thanks,
> 
> Mike

Regards,
Vitor

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/168001

Re: git-p4 issue

[Michael Horowitz]

Vitor,

> Could you please search for the following set of patches in this mailing list?
>
> [PATCH v2 0/3] git-p4: Improve branch support
>
> I think I sent v2 twice somehow, so please make sure you pick the latest ;)
> In these patches I add the possibility to use a "git-p4.branchList"
> configuration to define the branches. The patch is still to be approved because
> most people in the mailing list do not use branch detection, but I use it daily
> and it is working in my side. Could you please test it?

Can you send this patch again?  It looks like you had previously
responded to the list only, so I never got this message, as I wasn't
on the list at the time (I am now).  I only saw this because I was
searching the archive for something else.  I searched for the patch,
but the actual patch body doesn't seem to be in the archive.

Thanks,

Mike




On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Michael Horowitz
<michael.horowitz@ieee.org> wrote:
> I don't have a problem with the branch detection if other people use
> it in ways I don't, but it would be nice to have more options and
> documentation around it.
>
> The best I can do to describe what I want is for it to use what is
> returned by "git-p4 branches", at minimum.  If there is some optional
> additional "new branch detection" logic, I don't have a problem with
> that, but that should only be in addition to the branches it already
> knows about from "git-p4 branches".  So, when I do a "git-p4 sync" or
> "git-p4 rebase", and it is importing changes from/to multiple
> branches, then it should get that list of branches using the same
> method "git-p4 branches" uses.  Does that make sense?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Pete Wyckoff <pw@padd.com> wrote:
>>
>> michael.horowitz@ieee.org wrote on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:57 -0400:
>> > OK, after some digging, I think I have figured out what is going on,
>> > but I am not sure how to fix it, at least not safely.
>> >
>> > There seem to be several different ways of detecting branches, and I
>> > am not exactly sure what they are all used for, or why there are so
>> > many, but the core of the issue I am having is that in importChanges
>> > when it calls splitFilesIntoBranches, it assumes "self.knownBranches"
>> > has all the branches, even though it already has the branches from
>> > "self.p4BranchesInGit".  The exact reason I don't know, but the
>> > results is splitFilesIntoBranches returns an empty array, and so when
>> > the code loops over it, it silently does nothing.
>>
>> I too am confused by the branch handling in git-p4, and have never
>> used it.  I'd love to rip it all out, along with the confusion,
>> but know that some people use it with success.
>>
>> At least it all could use some overhaul and documentation so we
>> can see what's going on.
>>
>> > The first fix that would be helpful is to at least report an error if
>> > it can't find the branches, rather than silently doing nothing.  I am
>> > not exactly sure why it needs to look in "self.knownBranches", so I
>> > don't know what the error should report, maybe the error should be
>> > reported earlier?
>> >
>> > The other issue is how "self.knownBranches" seems to be populated.  It
>> > looks like form my code path, which decides to "Import from/to
>> > multiple branches", it tries to detect branches by using "p4
>> > branches".  Again, this is odd, since I can see it already has the
>> > names of the branches from "self.p4BranchesInGit".  I am not familiar
>> > enough with the code (and figuring out Python as I go along) to know
>> > why.  The problem with using "p4 branches" is those aren't really
>> > branches, they are aliases to a merge command (integrate in p4 lingo)
>> > which stores the from and to branch.  The branch in Perforce is really
>> > just a directory.  Interestingly enough, it seems this logic also
>> > attempts to detect new branches and automatically import them, but
>> > ironically this doesn't actually work for me.
>>
>> This is my understanding of "p4 branch" as well.  At our site,
>> the list of p4 branches does not at all correspond to what we
>> think of as code development branches in git.  Again, maybe
>> others use it differently?
>>
>> We do maintain p4 view lists, but that is kept out-of-band, not
>> in any p4 mechanism.  These map friendlier short names to a list
>> of directories in p4 and how to assemble those into a workspace.
>>
>> > So, the crux of the problem is that "p4 branches" are not necessary to
>> > have at all.  The reason this suddenly stopped working for me is that
>> > someone had created one of these branch definitions and I didn't know,
>> > so it was accidentally working all this time, but only for 2 of the
>> > branches.  Then the person removed the definition, and it stopped
>> > working.  Now the workaround is to go and create these things for
>> > every branch, but considering these are unnecessary and cumbersome to
>> > create, and the code seems to be able to find the branches already
>> > from the "self.p4BranchesInGit" anyway, I would like to remove the
>> > dependency on that logic.
>> >
>> > Now, I could go ahead and hack something that does things differently,
>> > but since I don't really know the intention of these structures or how
>> > it might impact elsewhere in the code, I could use some guidance from
>> > someone who knows this code well.
>>
>> Vitor uses branches, and his patch that he recommends might be
>> the work-around you are looking for.
>>
>> I thought all this branch code was opt-in, so if you fail to say
>> "--detect-branches", it won't try to auto-detect anything.
>>
>> But there is maybe another use case in here, which is to
>> import multiple directories of the depot into _different_
>> refs/remotes/p4/<branch>.  (I've only ever done one at a
>> time, and into the default p4/master.)  And now that you
>> have multiple git-p4 branches, you're stuck with them due to the
>> login in p4BranchesInGit().  That feature should be handled
>> independently of the "p4 branch" auto-detection one.
>>
>> The branch handling needs rework.  You might help by describing
>> how you want it to work and we can see if this is the same as how
>> Vitor uses branches.
>>
>>                -- Pete
>

Re: git-p4 issue

[Vitor Antunes]

Hi Michael,

Michael Horowitz <michael.horowitz <at> ieee.org> writes:

> 
> Vitor,
> 
> > Could you please search for the following set of patches in this
> > mailing list?
> >
> > [PATCH v2 0/3] git-p4: Improve branch support
> >
> > I think I sent v2 twice somehow, so please make sure you pick the
> > latest ;)
> > In these patches I add the possibility to use a "git-p4.branchList"
> > configuration to define the branches. The patch is still to be
> > approved because most people in the mailing list do not use branch
> > detection, but I use it daily and it is working in my side. Could
> > you please test it?
> 
> Can you send this patch again?  It looks like you had previously
> responded to the list only, so I never got this message, as I wasn't
> on the list at the time (I am now).  I only saw this because I was
> searching the archive for something else.  I searched for the patch,
> but the actual patch body doesn't seem to be in the archive.

I am also not in the mailing list, I just follow its RSS and try to
follow up on the git-p4 related topics ;) That is the reason why you
were not included in the reply.

But I have been a bit busy and did not see this email passing by. Sorry.
Luckily I had a tab opened in this thread, which I looked at today
wondering what it was about! :P

Please follow the link to the thread [1] and you can open each of the
entries. Take care not to apply patch 1/3 as it may require you to clone
everything again.

> Thanks,
> 
> Mike
> 

Regards,
Vitor

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/167998/focus=168000

Re: git-p4 issue

[Michael Horowitz]

Vitor,

I know it has been a long time, but I finally tried the below, and it
works for me.  I was doing things wrong at first, but I think I
finally understand what is going on...

First, the branchList is great, that is what I needed.  Now I can
completely ignore the p4 branches.  It would be great if there was an
option to not have it query p4 branches at all, because we have so
many branches here it takes forever, and I am just using branchList.
What I did for now was to use your branchUser option, and pass it a
bogus username, like "XXXXXX".  At least this way it returns fast, but
would be nice to not have it try to query at all.

I think I understand now why all this is needed if you want it to
detect branches on its own.  Since in Perforce branches are just
directories, there is no way to tell if a directory is a branch or
not, and people could organize branches in an arbitrary directory
structure.  I was thinking you could look at sibling directories under
the same parent, which may be common, but there is no way to know for
sure, so better to be explicit.

The other odd issue is that if you do not add the new branch to
branchList (or p4 branches if you are using them) before you do the
git-p4 sync, then since it goes through change numbers in order, it
will never go back again and catch the branch in a change it already
synced.  This is why I could never get it to work, because I never had
it in place before I synced the relevant change.  What I realized
though is that I can always do a "git-p4 sync --detect-branches
//depot/foo/bar/@all" again, even though I already have the most
recent change, and it will re-detect any branches I missed (given I
have since added them to branchList).

What I had been thinking though is that if it had already detected
branches once, it could at least update the remote p4 branches it
already knew about to point at the latest revision, just not try to
detect new ones, and not rely on branchList.  Of course you would
still need branchList to detect any new branches.

Anyway, works a lot better than it did before.

Thanks,

Mike


On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Vitor Antunes <vitor.hda@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> Michael Horowitz <michael.horowitz <at> ieee.org> writes:
>
>>
>> Vitor,
>>
>> > Could you please search for the following set of patches in this
>> > mailing list?
>> >
>> > [PATCH v2 0/3] git-p4: Improve branch support
>> >
>> > I think I sent v2 twice somehow, so please make sure you pick the
>> > latest ;)
>> > In these patches I add the possibility to use a "git-p4.branchList"
>> > configuration to define the branches. The patch is still to be
>> > approved because most people in the mailing list do not use branch
>> > detection, but I use it daily and it is working in my side. Could
>> > you please test it?
>>
>> Can you send this patch again?  It looks like you had previously
>> responded to the list only, so I never got this message, as I wasn't
>> on the list at the time (I am now).  I only saw this because I was
>> searching the archive for something else.  I searched for the patch,
>> but the actual patch body doesn't seem to be in the archive.
>
> I am also not in the mailing list, I just follow its RSS and try to
> follow up on the git-p4 related topics ;) That is the reason why you
> were not included in the reply.
>
> But I have been a bit busy and did not see this email passing by. Sorry.
> Luckily I had a tab opened in this thread, which I looked at today
> wondering what it was about! :P
>
> Please follow the link to the thread [1] and you can open each of the
> entries. Take care not to apply patch 1/3 as it may require you to clone
> everything again.
>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Mike
>>
>
> Regards,
> Vitor
>
> [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/167998/focus=168000
>
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

git-p4 issue

[Brent]

Hello all,

I’m having some trouble with git-p4 and wondering if anyone can advise. I
have tried to google the problem but as I’m a P4 admin not a Git admin I’m a
bit lost.

I can clone the P4 branch I need OK, but then when I try to run git p4 sync
afterwards I always get an error such as:

Doing initial import of //<snip>/<snip>  from revision #head into
refs/remotes/p4/master
fast-import failed: b"warning: Not updating refs/remotes/p4/master (new tip
fd3d39549d1d025f3657ab38c3e450d92309dfbe does not contain
0cd5897229761558ef01a6b87c702c86e9bfffd2)

Can anyone help?

Cheers

Brent