Delete a Perforce client workspace with pending files when the workspace has already been removed from disk

perforceversion control

How do I delete a workspace that has pending files when that workspace has already been removed from disk?

Caveats:

p4 command line only; not p4v gui
regular user access; no admin access

Scenario:

create a workspace named user_workspace on the disk in the ~/my_workspace directory
p4 edit files in workspace on the default pending changelist
remove workspace by hand (rm -rf ~/my_workspace)
- workspace still exists on server with pending files

Solutions that don't work:

1: Delete workspace

Doesn't work because the workspace has files opened.

p4 client -d user_workspace

Client 'user_workspace' has files opened; use -f to force delete.

2: Delete workspace with force

Doesn't work because not admin.

p4 client -d -f user_workspace

You don't have permission for this operation.

3: Delete the pending changelist; then delete workspace (try 1)

p4 changes -c user_workspace -s pending

Only lists pending numbered changelists, does not handle the default pending changelist.

p4 -c user_workspace -d changelist_number

Not possible because there is no changelist number for the pending changelist.

4: Delete the pending changelist; then delete workspace (try 2)

Trying to do a p4 revert on a directory that does not exist anymore gives a strange error.

p4 revert ~/my_workspace

/home/user/my_workspace – must refer to client 'user_workspace'.

p4 -c user_workspace revert ~/my_workspace

/home/user/my_workspace – must refer to client 'user_workspace'.

setenv P4CLIENT user_workspace; p4 -c user_workspace revert ~/my_workspace

/home/user/my_workspace – must refer to client 'user_workspace'.

Best Answer

1. Revert the pending changelist

Have to use Perforce depot notation instead of local directory notation because the local directory does not exist anymore.

p4 -c user_workspace revert -k //...

//blah/blah/blah/file#rev - was edit, reverted

2. Delete the client workspace

p4 client -d user_workspace

Client user_workspace deleted.

How do you create a new project/repository?

A git repository is simply a directory containing a special .git directory.

This is different from "centralised" version-control systems (like subversion), where a "repository" is hosted on a remote server, which you checkout into a "working copy" directory. With git, your working copy is the repository.

Simply run git init in the directory which contains the files you wish to track.

For example,

cd ~/code/project001/
git init

This creates a .git (hidden) folder in the current directory.

To make a new project, run git init with an additional argument (the name of the directory to be created):

git init project002

(This is equivalent to: mkdir project002 && cd project002 && git init)

To check if the current current path is within a git repository, simply run git status - if it's not a repository, it will report "fatal: Not a git repository"

You could also list the .git directory, and check it contains files/directories similar to the following:

$ ls .git
HEAD         config       hooks/       objects/
branches/    description  info/        refs/

If for whatever reason you wish to "de-git" a repository (you wish to stop using git to track that project). Simply remove the .git directory at the base level of the repository.

cd ~/code/project001/
rm -rf .git/

Caution: This will destroy all revision history, all your tags, everything git has done. It will not touch the "current" files (the files you can currently see), but previous changes, deleted files and so on will be unrecoverable!

In Perforce, how to find the local path for files in a pending changelist

To output the local path of all pending adds of a changelist you can use:

p4 opened -c changelist | grep -w add | sed 's/#.*//' \
| p4 -x - where | awk '/^\// {print $3}'

This does the same without grep but is a bit more obscure:

p4 opened -c changelist | sed -n 's/\(.*\)#.*- add .*/\1/p' \
| p4 -x - where | awk '/^\// {print $3}'

Caveats:

Scenario:

Solutions that don't work:

1: Delete workspace

2: Delete workspace with force

3: Delete the pending changelist; then delete workspace (try 1)

4: Delete the pending changelist; then delete workspace (try 2)

Best Answer

1. Revert the pending changelist

2. Delete the client workspace

Related Solutions

Git for beginners: The definitive practical guide

How do you create a new project/repository?

In Perforce, how to find the local path for files in a pending changelist

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