Release Notes for P4Ruby, Perforce's script API for Ruby

Version 2017.1

Introduction

P4Ruby is a native Ruby gem that allows you to run Perforce commands from Ruby applications, and retrieve the results in a Ruby-friendly format.

P4Ruby is intended to work against a corresponding version of the Perforce C++ API, e.g., P4Ruby 2017.1 will be compiled using a 2017.1 version of the P4API. You can always install P4Ruby specifying a specific version of the P4API.

To determine the version of your P4Ruby, and which version of the P4API it has been built with, issue the following command:

ruby -rP4 -e "puts P4.identify"

Installing P4Ruby

As of 2014.2, the recommended mechanism for installing P4Ruby is via rubygems.org.

Before installing, please take care that any older version of P4Ruby that may have been installed outside of the Gem process is removed from your gempath. The older installation process can not be easily removed and may conflict with a gem-based install. Make sure that both P4.rb and P4.so (or P4.bundle on OS X) are not available within the load path of Ruby. You can use the puts $: command in irb to determine your current load path.

Outside of Windows, p4ruby gem installs must be compiled locally against your installation of Ruby. If you can build the core Ruby distribution locally, you likely can install P4Ruby without incident. On Windows, precompiled gems are available, which already include the P4API and OpenSSL.

The main command to install p4ruby is via gem or bundler. (When using the default system rubies from OS X or the CentOS Software Collections Library, see 'Problems Specifying P4API' below.)

gem install p4ruby

This will download a corresponding version of the p4api from ftp.perforce.com, and will automatically include the openssl version you have locally.

If you have downloaded the p4api and unpacked it, you can specify it using the --with-p4api-dir option.

gem install p4ruby -- --with-p4api-dir=DIR

In this case, the DIR above is the path to the C++ API distribution that should match the major and minor version of P4Ruby. If you omit the --with-p4api-dir option, the gem will attempt to download a version of the API itself from ftp.perforce.com.

Alternatively, you can use Bundler (http://bundler.io). In your Gemfile, specify

gem 'p4ruby', '~> 2017.1'

And then execute:

bundle --with-p4api-dir=DIR

Problems Specifying P4API

On older Ruby platforms, such as the default OS X or ruby193 CentOS distributions, issues can arise when specifying the P4API directly via the command line.

In these cases, you may need to indicate the include and lib directories directly:

gem install p4ruby -- --with-p4api-dir=DIR \
   --with-p4-api-include=DIR/include \
   --with-p4-api-lib=DIR/lib

An alternative is to specify the P4API directory using the p4api_dir environment variable.

Building P4Ruby from Source on Linux or OS X

  1. Download the Perforce C++ API from the Perforce FTP site at "ftp://ftp.perforce.com/perforce". The API archive is located in release and platform-specific subdirectories and is named "p4api.tgz".

IMPORTANT: Mac OS X users MUST use the 'darwin' variant of the Perforce API. Using the 'macos' variant does not work.

Note: 32-bit builds of P4Ruby require a 32-bit version of the C++ API and a 32-bit version of Ruby. 64-bit builds of P4Ruby require a 64-bit version of the C++ API and a 64-bit version of Ruby.

Unzip the archive into an empty directory.

  1. Extract the P4Ruby API archive into a new, empty directory.

  2. In the p4ruby source directory, install dependencies:

    bundle install

  3. In the p4ruby source directory, build the gem:

    p4api_dir=<absolute path to Perforce C++ API> rake compile

  4. Test your distribution, which relies on a locally installed p4d.

    rake test

    If p4d is not available on your path, indicate it via the P4D_BIN environment variable before running rake test.

  5. Install P4Ruby into your local gem cache:

    rake install

SSL support

Perforce Server 2012.1 and later supports SSL connections and the C++ API has been compiled with this support. For applications that do not requireSSL support the C++ API provides a stub library (libp4sslstub.*) to satisfy the linker requirements.

If the P4Ruby build detects that OpenSSL is available, it will be included by default. To disable, execute the gem command using --without-ssllib. If you want to use libraries deployed to nonstandard paths, you will have to alter ext/P4/extconf.rb and include the dir_config() directives appropriate for your system.

Compatibility Statements

Server Compatibility

You can use any release of P4Ruby with any release of the Perforce server later than 2001.1

You should use a version of P4Ruby built against a corresponding version of the P4API that matches your Perforce server version. Since 2014.2, you should try to use the same major and minor variation of P4Ruby as used by the Perforce server. Ergo, against Perforce server version 2017.1, you would want a P4Ruby version that starts with 2017.1.

API Compatibility

The 2017.1 release of P4Ruby supports the 2017.1 Perforce API. Older releases might work but are not supported.

Ruby Compatibility

The 2017.1 release of P4Ruby is supported by installing the gem with Ruby MRI releases 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3, with shared library support.

For detailed compatibility, please check the following table:

Ruby Release | P4Ruby Release
===================================
     <2.0    | 2011.1 or later (unsupported)
     2.0     | 2014.1 or later
     2.1     | 2014.2 or later
     2.2     | 2014.2 or later
     2.3     | 2017.1 or later

It is recommended that you use a Ruby distribution that can deploy native gems easily, which, outside of Windows means obtaining a source distribution of ruby and building it locally. This is easily done via RVM, and can be installed system-wide, with other features (like wrappers) that allow you to update the local installation of Ruby as security patches are released. If using RVM, be sure to use --disable-binary when installing your version of Ruby, to avoid any precompiled distributions that may not have shared library support configured, which is needed for Ruby extensions.

In general, Ruby VMs installed via package managers are not officially coordinated with the MRI releases available on ruby-lang.org.

We do verify that p4ruby works with Ruby 1.9 on Debian (and Ubuntu), and on CentOS 6 using the Software Collections Library. These are considered "stable" distributions, and do receive security updates.

Other versions of Ruby, such as the default distribution of OS X may not work. The default OS X Ruby is infrequently updated by Apple, and is known to contain issues that do not seem to be patched.

OpenSSL Compatibility

To build P4Ruby with encrypted communication support, you must use the version of OpenSSL that Perforce C/C++ API has been built against. Running P4Ruby linked to an older library will fail with the error:

"SSL library must be at least version 1.0.1."

The 2017.1 release of P4Ruby is supported with OpenSSL 1.0.2

For detailed compatibility, please check the following table:

Perforce C/C++ API Version | OpenSSL Release
============================================
     2012.1                |    1.0.0
     2012.2                |    1.0.1g+
     2014.1                |    1.0.1g+
     2014.2                |    1.0.1i+
     2015.1                |    1.0.1i+
     2015.2                |    1.0.1i+
     2017.1                |  1.0.2l+

Platform Compatibility

Note: As of 2012.1, a universal build of the Perforce C/C++ API is no longer available for Darwin. P4Ruby is now a 64-bit only library on Darwin and must be built with a 64-bit version of the Perforce C/C++ API for Darwin. This has been tested with a universal build of Ruby and is known to work.

Compiler Compatibility

To build P4Ruby from source, you must use a version of Ruby that has been compiled with the same compiler used to build the Perforce C++ API: for most platforms, use gcc/g++.

Attempting to use a different compiler or a different version of the compiler causes linker errors due to differences in name handling between compilers.

Compatibility with Previous Releases

Unless otherwise stated below, the 2017.1 release of P4Ruby is compatible with previous releases from Perforce Software.

Known Limitations

The Perforce client-server protocol is not designed to support multiple concurrent queries over the same connection. For this reason, multi-threaded applications using the C++ API or the script APIs (P4Perl, P4Ruby, etc.) should ensure that a separate connection is used for each thread or that only one thread may use a shared connection at a time.

Deleted Methods

The following methods have been deleted from the P4 class and are no longer available:

  • output The output is returned by the run* methods
  • parse_forms Form parsing is now always on
  • tagged See tagged? and tagged= below.

Tagged Mode and Form Parsing

In P4Ruby, both form parsing and tagged output are on by default.

Form parsing cannot be explicitly disabled, but tagged output can be turned on and off by setting p4.tagged as follows:

p4.tagged = false   # Disabled
p4.tagged = true    # Enabled

Because form parsing does not work when tagged output is disabled, this method can be used to disable form parsing if necessary.

Change overview

This document lists all user-visible changes to P4Ruby from release 2007.3, the first supported P4Ruby release.

Perforce numbers releases YYYY.R/CCCCC, e.g. 2002.1/30547. YYYY is the year; R is the release of that year; CCCCC is the bug fix change level. Each bug fix in these release notes is marked by its change number. Any build includes (1) all bug fixes of all previous releases and (2) all bug fixes of the current release up to the bug fix change level.

New functionality in 2017.1

  • (SIR#93993 / P4RUBY-206)

    Add a reset() method for resetting p4 client data (messages, output, etc.) between calls to run

  • (SIR#92235 / P4RUBY-204)

    Support graph depot commands

New functionality in 2015.2

  • (SIR#78548 / P4RUBY-193)

    Release native P4Ruby gems for x86-mingw32 and x64-mingw32. Until this point, the only source gems have been available. These gems will allow Windows users for 32 or 64-bit Ruby 2.0, 2.1 or 2.2 to easily install P4Ruby.

Changes in both 2015.2.0.pre0 and 2015.1.0

  • Applied change to P4ClientApi::SetCharset, that if it is set to "none", then we will ignore the setting. The P4API enviro file handling seems to always create this setting and apply it in various circumstances.

Changes in 2015.1.0

  • Updated spec mappings in specmgr.cpp to be up to date with the 2015.1 P4API

  • Allow the P4_BIN environment variable to be set to point to a p4d for the testing library (used by the rake test task).

New functionality in 2014.2

  • (SIR#28879 / P4RUBY-25)

    Release P4Ruby as Gem. Until this point, the gems available on rubygems.org were unofficial builds, and prone to fail in non-interactive environments like bundler.

  • (SIR#75097 / P4RUBY-169)

    Add enviro_file property to P4 object, which underneath, uses the new SetEnviroFile/GetEnviroFile mechanism from the 14.2 C++ API.

Changes in 2014.2.0.pre6

  • Documented workarounds to installation failures on the OS X default Ruby installation.

Changes in 2014.2.0.pre5

  • Fixed an issue where using the --with-p4api-dir option to gem install would not actually set up the include and lib compilation directory correctly.

  • No longer distributing precompiled builds for linux or OS X due to inadequate information from gem to match the Ruby distribution correctly.

  • No longer embedding the C++ P4API to keep the total file size down to allow the gem to be distributed via RubyGems.org.

  • Changed logic to call p4.charset=nil if charset is already nil or resolves to 'none'. Internally, this will trigger a call to ClientApi::SetTrans(0), which should disable character set autodetection.

Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre4

  • (BUG#77207 / P4RUBY-176) If the user has specified 'P4CHARSET=none' in a configuration file, or has not set p4.charset='auto' (and it's default value was initialized to 'none' by the C++ API), automatically disable character set detection. This can cause the API to break when connecting to non-unicode servers even though it appears to be configured to not be a unicode client.

  • The default C++ API version should be included with the gem source, to avoid calls to ftp.perforce.com.

Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre3

  • (BUG#75096 / P4RUBY-168) Spec mappings updated to 14.2 definitions.

  • (TASK#76795 / P4RUBY-176) Configuring pre-compiled gems for Linux and OS X, for supported Ruby versions (2.0, 2.1, 2.2).

Bugs fixed in 2014.2.0.pre2

  • (BUG#76321 / P4RUBY-171) gem install fails using source gem distribution inside of a Docker environment due to passive FTP mode not enabled early enough.

New functionality in 2014.1

  • 807216 (SIR#70070)

    P4Ruby now supports the P4IGNORE file feature introduced in the 2013.2 server. Three new methods have been added to support this functionality:

    P4#ignore_file      - Report current file
P4#ignore_file=     - Set ignore file
P4#ignored?( <file> )   - Test if <file> is
              ignored

  • 807216, 750979 (SIR#70093)

    P4Ruby now supports the Ruby 2.0 series of rubies.

Bugs fixed in 2013.1

  • 733921 (Bug#63887)

    P4Ruby no longer crashes when an exception is raised from the block passed to P4#run_resolve.

New functionality in 2012.2

  • 525301 (Bug #59803)

    P4Ruby now supports Apple Mountain Lion (10.8).

  • 509253 (Bug #56480)

    Added P4#run_tickets() method to list local tickets. Note that P4.run('tickets') still gives the old error message "Must upgrade to 2004.2 p4 to access tickets."

  • 505980 (Bug #56514)

    Support for the new progress indicator API. P4Ruby supplies a new progress attribute, which can take an instance of P4::Progress class or subclass. Progress information is currently only supported for submits and 'sync -q'. Details can be found in the documentation.

  • 499586 (Bug #56520)

    New convenience method P4#each_() that allows easy iteration through some or all spec objects such as clients or changes. Details can be found in the documentation.

Bugs fixed in 2012.2

  • 525097 (Bug #59786)

    Building P4Ruby with MinGW could generate the link error.

    g++: unrecognized option '-static-libstdc++'

    This has been fixed.

  • 505548 (Bug #58649)

    P4#parse_client could raise the exception "Unknown field name 'StreamAtChange'." when parsing a stream client workspace. Internal spec definition has been updated to resolve this.

New functionality in 2012.1

  • 419591 (Bug #51895)

    P4Ruby supports SSL connections if compiled with SSL support. Instructions on how to compile with SSL support can be found at the top of this document under "Building P4Ruby from Source" and in the documentation.

    P4.identify will report the version of the OpenSSL library used to build the Perforce C++ API (not the version P4Ruby is linked against).

  • 415643

    P4Ruby will now only build a 64-bit version of the library on Darwin.

  • 413362 (Bug #51899)

    Enable "action resolve" to support resolves of branches, deletes and file types. The existing P4::MergeData class has been extended and the additional attributes will be populated for an 'action resolve'. Details of the additional attributes can be found in the documentation.

Bugs fixed in 2012.1

  • 420839 (Bug #52952)

    Accessing the base_name attribute of a P4::MergeData object resulted in a segmentation fault when resolving binary files. This has now been fixed and all empty fields will return Nil.

  • 410916, 410702 (Bug #52320)

    Exceptions thrown during P4.run_resolve are now raised up to the user. If an exception is encountered during the block's execution, P4Ruby will skip the remaining files.

New functionality in 2011.1

  • 405913

    New method P4#messages() returns all messages from the server as objects. Script writers can test the severity of the messages to know if they are output messages (E_INFO), warnings (E_WARN), or errors (E_FAILED/E_FATAL).

    P4#errors() and P4#warnings still return the errors and warnings as strings for backwards compatibility.

    P4::Message objects have the following methods:

    P4::Message#severity - Returns the severity of the message, which may be one of the following values:

    E_EMPTY # nothing yet E_INFO # something good happened E_WARN # something not good happened E_FAILED # user did something wrong E_FATAL # system broken -- nothing can continue

    P4::Message#generic - Returns the generic class of the error, which may be one of the following values:

    EV_NONE # misc EV_USAGE # request not consistent with dox EV_UNKNOWN # using unknown entity EV_CONTEXT # using entity in wrong context EV_ILLEGAL # trying to do something you can't EV_NOTYET # something must be corrected first EV_PROTECT # protections prevented operation EV_EMPTY # action returned empty results EV_FAULT # inexplicable program fault EV_CLIENT # client side program errors EV_ADMIN # server administrative action required EV_CONFIG # client configuration inadequate EV_UPGRADE # client or server too old to interact EV_COMM # communications error EV_TOOBIG # not even Perforce can handle this much

    P4::Message#msgid - Return the unique ID of the message.

    P4::Message#to_s - Convert the object to a string

    P4::Message#inspect - Debugging support

  • 338410 (Bug #47374)

    P4Ruby supports setting values in the registry (on those platforms that support it).

    The command P4#set_env( var, val ) will set a registry variable on platforms that support this action or raise a P4Exception for those that don't.

    The command P4#set_env( var, "" ) unsets a registry variable.

  • 333292 (Bug #36121)

    P4Ruby now supports Ruby 1.9

  • 331384

    P4Ruby can now be compiled with the Mingw compiler using the MinGW P4Api build.

  • 328203 (Bug #45861)

    Enable streams in P4Ruby by default. With this change, streams specific specs such as streams depots are listed. Disable the listing of streams specific specs by either setting the api_level to a value below 70 or by disabling stream handling explicitly through the P4.streams attribute:

      p4.streams = false

  • 322353 (Bug #42250)

    P4Ruby supports a callback interface by providing a P4#handler attribute. Set P4#handler to an instance of a subclass of P4::OutputHandler to enable callbacks. When a handler is defined, P4Ruby will invoke the handler for every response it receives from the Perforce Server immediately instead of collecting all results together in an array first. This can be used to make applications more scalable and more responsive if large results are expected. See the documentation for details on the OutputHandler class.

Bugs fixed in 2011.1

  • 405913 (Bug #43426)

    Running 'print' on a file that started with '---' would cause an exception in Ruby. This is now fixed.

    There is still an oddity when p4.track = 1 and a user runs p4.run_print() on a file that only has lines starting with '--- '. In that case, the output of the print is lost.

    Disable tracking by setting p4.track = 0 (the default) will solve this problem.

  • 405913 (Bug #41350)

    Info messages now shown in P4#Messages.

  • 385159 (Bug #49324)

    On Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 2008, a client running as Administrator would fail to properly process file names in non-ASCII character sets (such as Shift-JIS).

  • 338903 (Bug #44589)

    Extra dot at the end of the extracted directory path has been removed.

  • 338437 (Bug #39580)

    P4#identify() reports the platform on AMD64 as X86_64 in line with all other Perforce products.

  • 332453

    Updated the stored spec templates for client, change, group, spec and user. Added spec template for new spec type streams. These are required, for example, for form-triggers that do not connect to the server first.

  • 329351 (Bug #41271)

    Include 'extraTag' fields in P4::Spec objects

  • 328578 (Bug #39264)

    P4#identify() now reports P4Ruby as P4RUBY in line with all other Perforce products. It will also include the build number of the Perforce C/C++ API that it is built with.

New functionality in 2010.2

  • 260859

    Added new SetTrack() and GetTrack() methods.

    For more details about server performance tracking see: http://kb.perforce.com/article/883

  • 255945, 255949, 269012

    New method P4#messages() returns all messages from the server as objects. Script writers can test the severity of the messages to know if they are output messages (E_INFO), warnings (E_WARN), or errors (E_FAILED/E_FATAL).

    P4#errors() and P4#warnings still return the errors and warnings as strings for backwards compatibility.

    P4::Message objects have the following methods:

    P4::Message#severity - Returns the severity of the message, which may be one of the following values:

      E_EMPTY   # nothing yet
  E_INFO    # something good happened
  E_WARN    # something not good happened
  E_FAILED  # user did something wrong
  E_FATAL   # system broken -- nothing can continue

    P4::Message#generic - Returns the generic class of the error, which may be one of the following values:

      EV_NONE   # misc
  EV_USAGE  # request not consistent with dox
  EV_UNKNOWN    # using unknown entity
  EV_CONTEXT    # using entity in wrong context
  EV_ILLEGAL    # trying to do something you can't
  EV_NOTYET # something must be corrected first
  EV_PROTECT    # protections prevented operation
  EV_EMPTY  # action returned empty results
  EV_FAULT  # inexplicable program fault
  EV_CLIENT # client side program errors
  EV_ADMIN  # server administrative action required
  EV_CONFIG # client configuration inadequate
  EV_UPGRADE    # client or server too old to interact
  EV_COMM   # communications error
  EV_TOOBIG # not even Perforce can handle this much

    P4::Message#msgid - Return the unique ID of the message.

    P4::Message#to_s - Convert the object to a string

    P4::Message#inspect - Debugging support

Bugs fixed in 2010.2

  • 287185 (Bug #43426)

    Running 'print' on a file that started with '---' would cause an exception in Ruby. This is now fixed. There is still an oddity when p4.track = 1 and a user runs p4.run_print() on a file that only has lines starting with '--- '. In that case, the output of the print is lost. Disable tracking by setting p4.track = 0 (the default) will solve this problem.

New functionality in 2010.1

  • 232984

    Removed old Ruby 1.6 compatibility code that was no longer required. This paves the way for Ruby 1.9 compatibility.

  • 230644

    It's now unnecessary to run a command before calling the following methods:

       P4#server_level
   P4#server_case_sensitive?
   P4#server_unicode?

    If no command has been run, P4Ruby will automatically run a 'p4 info' in order to gather the required information.

  • 230191

    Added new P4#server_unicode? method that allows script writers to test whether or not a Perforce Server is in internationalized (unicode) mode. At least one Perforce command must have been executed against the server before this method can be called.

  • 230190

    Added new P4::VERSION, P4::OS, and P4::PATCHLEVEL constants so that script writers can test the installation of P4Ruby without having to parse the output of P4::Identify()

New functionality in 2009.2

  • 214454 (Bug #32916)

    P4#port= now raises a P4Exception if called after P4#connect().

  • 214449 (Bug #35416)

    Added a P4#server_case_sensitive? method that enables scripts to detect whether the server is case-sensitive. Cannot be called until a command has been issued to the server.

Bugs fixed in 2009.2

  • 214445,214999 (Bug #35410)

    P4Ruby now correctly tracks disconnects from the server.

  • 222727 (Bug #36568)

    The Map class removed '-' and '+' from the path if the form Map.insert(lhs, rhs) was used, even if these characters did not appear at the beginning of the path. Now dashes and pluses are preserved within the path.

New functionality in 2009.1

  • 191900 (Bug #26729)

    A new method:

    P4#tagged( aBool ) { block }

    has been added to the P4 class. This method temporarily toggles the use of tagged output for the duration of the block and resets it when the block terminates.

Bugs fixed in 2009.1

  • 191889 (Bug #29911)

    Calling P4#run_resolve() or P4#run( 'resolve' ) without a block or a previous call to P4#input no longer causes an infinite loop.

  • 191623,191627 (Bug #32918)

    P4Ruby now correctly parses jobs when the jobspec contains field names ending in numbers.

New functionality in 2008.2

  • 162422 (Bug #30364), 166158

    A new class, P4::Map, enables users to create and use Perforce mappings without requiring a connection to a server. Methods in the P4::Map class are:

    P4::Map.new     Constructor
P4::Map.join        Join two maps to create a third
P4::Map#clear       Empty a map
P4::Map#count       Return the number of entries
P4::Map#empty?      Tests whether a map object is empty
P4::Map#insert      Inserts an entry into the map
P4::Map#translate   Translate a string through a map
P4::Map#includes?   Tests whether a path is mapped
P4::Map#reverse     Swap left and right sides of the mapping
P4::Map#lhs     Returns the left side as an array
P4::Map#rhs     Returns the right side as an array
P4::Map#to_a        Returns the map as an array

Bugs fixed in 2008.2

  • 169159 (Bug #29935, Bug #31096), 165338

    P4Ruby now correctly loads the value of P4CHARSET from the environment.

New functionality in 2008.1

  • 152356 (Bug #29022)

    A new method 'P4#env( var )' method has been added to the P4 class. This instance method enables the caller to interrogate the Perforce environment, including reading Perforce variables from P4CONFIG files and, on Windows, the registry. P4#cwd= now loads any P4CONFIG file settings that are appropriate to the new working directory.

  • 153005 (Bug #29308)

    P4Ruby now supports Mac OS X 10.5.

Bugs fixed in 2007.3

  • 151167 (Bug #28774)

    The Makefile generated on some Linux platforms (notably Ubuntu 7.10) was not correct, and attempted to link P4Ruby using 'cc' instead of 'c++', causing an 'undefined symbol' error (typically 'ZTVN10cxxabiv120_si_class_type_infoE') , when attempting to use P4Ruby. This problem has been corrected.

  • 150577 (Bug #28704)

    The presence of deleted revisions in a file's history might lead to incorrect fileSize and digest attributes for other revisions in the output of P4#run_filelog. This problem has been corrected.

  • 150576 (Bug #28773)

    P4::Revision#filesize() always returned nil. This problem has been corrected.