hainesr/p4v repository overview

⁠Perforce Helix Clients

⁠Synopsis

This image contains the suite of free Perforce Helix Clients⁠:

• Helix administration tool (p4admin). Enables system administrators to easily manage and monitor Perforce Helix users and SCM operations.
• Visual merge tool (p4merge). Provides graphical three-way merging and side-by-side file comparisons.
• Visual client (p4v). Provides access to versioned files through a graphical interface and also includes tools for merging and visualizing code evolution.
• Command-line tool (p4vc). Provides access to all Perforce features and functions as an interface for scripting and automated operations.

⁠Building the image

Download the p4v package from the Perforce website⁠ and save it in this directory. Then run:

docker build -t <tag> .

⁠Running the tools

Use the following incantations to run each of the tools within this image. Note that the tools that have graphical interfaces need to be able to open a window on your local X server.

The tools all run as the user p4v within the container but you can tell docker to run the container as another user with the -u switch, as shown in the examples below.

⁠Helix administration tool

docker run -it --rm \
  --name p4admin \
  --volume=$HOME/.p4admin:/home/p4v/.p4admin \
  --volume=$HOME/.cache:/home/p4v/.cache \
  --volume=/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
  -e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY \
  -u $UID \
  hainesr/p4v p4admin

⁠Visual merge tool

docker run -it --rm \
  --name p4merge \
  --volume=$HOME/.p4merge:/home/p4v/.p4merge \
  --volume=$HOME/.cache:/home/p4v/.cache \
  --volume=$(pwd):/opt/work \
  --volume=/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
  -e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY \
  -u $UID \
  hainesr/p4v p4merge [args]

Replace [args] with -h for more information.

⁠Visual client

docker run -it --rm \
  --name p4v \
  --volume=$HOME/.p4qt:/home/p4v/.p4qt \
  --volume=$HOME/.cache:/home/p4v/.cache \
  --volume=/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
  -e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY \
  -u $UID \
  hainesr/p4v p4v

⁠Command-line tool

docker run -it --rm \
  --name p4vc \
  --volume=$(pwd):/opt/work \
  -u $UID \
  hainesr/p4v p4vc [args]

Replace [args] with help for more details.

⁠Running other programs in the image

You can run any other program that is installed in the image by simply calling it as normal. For example, to run bash:

docker run -it --rm hainesr/p4v /bin/bash [args]

Any arguments you specify will be passed to the program you are running as normal.

⁠Using Bash functions to run the tools more natively

I like to wrap the commands above in a function so that I can run them as if the tools were installed in my PATH as normal. For example (p4merge):

p4merge() {
  docker run -it --rm \
    --name p4merge \
    --volume=$HOME/.config/p4merge:/home/p4v/.p4merge \
    --volume=$HOME/.cache:/home/p4v/.cache \
    --volume=$(pwd):/opt/work \
    --volume=/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
    -e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY \
    -u $UID \
    hainesr/p4v p4merge "$@"
}

This runs p4merge, passing arguments through as required.

See my dotfiles⁠ for more details.