Helix Core Reviews & Product Details

Helix core/ Perforce/ P4V is a GUI based VCS which itself is very unique and easy to use once have a good understanding of it.

It is very easy to install, configure and use.

A very user friendly interface with realtime comparison of the scripts you have in your local workspace and on cloud/ depot.

Gives a detailed dashboard where you can see all the changes that have been submitted recently and a version comparison lets you know if your script is the latest or you need to pull a latest version. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Initially understanding this software is a bit confusing, especially for people who has worked on GIT or BitBucket.

It doesn't have a bash window where you can send commands to upload your scripts, instead you go through the directory, create a pending checklist, put your files there and then submit.

Not used in most of indian IT companies so experience doesn't count, most organization always prefer GIT or BitBucket over helix.

Branching concept is almost negated, you get your scripts reviewed and push directly to the Depot.

No integration with pycharm or other IDEs available in market so you either have a cloud copy i.e. read only or a local copy of script in your hand. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Stream Graphs and auto-resolving. Visual representation of the files currently checked out and need resolved. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Pretty much everything else. Merging something from a task stream to a main stream takes 5-6 steps too many. Working with workspaces and streams is a confusing mess. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The option to see all changes in different gui and command line options Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is a centralized system, server is always needed Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Consistent across all business units and developers. It keeps improving in ease of use and performance. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is expensive, and not particularly easy to work with. It does not tie in well to our BOM system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It integrates fairly well with MadCap Flare, allowing us to keep a version history of documents that we create so we can roll back if necessary. It is easy to use once you know the layout, and the check-in/check-out system is great for version control.

I also like that the desktop client lets you see your full file directory and open files from there in different programs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

By default, you are allowed to check out and make changes to a file that someone else has checked out. If you don't know this and don't have exclusive checkout enabled, it's possible to lose changes that you make Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

User friendly graphical tools like the Revision Graph and file history graphs.

Securely manageable single repository as well as large repositories that delivers files quickly to distributed teams.

Efficient and effect support.

I think using the graphical interface to perforce (p4v) is a more effective way to work with perforce for most users. It makes it much easier to manage multiple workspaces, change lists, branch mappings, merging and most other functions.

Time lapse tool is just fantastic

I can not live without side-by-side diff tool at a mouse click

Command line tools are powerful but needs little more experience, that comes with time.

Applying the scripts is making daily work easy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

nitial learning is slightly rough when you come from GIT background, as you pick it up, it becomes fun. I watched online videos from basic to advanced level and now I am comfortable using it. Everyday there is something I learn from my coworkers.

Setting up Helix server is rigorous at the first go, but if you it once, then next time it is straight forward. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are excellent graphical tools like the Revision Graph and the Merge Tool included.

The possibility to automate and access by scripts using command line and various API's is very useful.

There is very good support and knowledge base available.

The Swarm add-on to Perfore is exellent for collaboration and reviews but it actually should be even more tightly integrated as part of the basic product rater than an add-on.

Perforce is very good at handling large files and large repos efficiently.

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The concept of a workspace and checking out files is non-intuitive and confusing to new users who are used to Git.

The convienient way of doing Rollback/Backout is good but it is very problematic when it comes to integration records (merges).

Server administration and setup gets a bit complicated when you need more advanced features like replication, broker, SSL-support. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Graph and History give a very interesting visual information about source changes.

Customisation via scripts at submit or via P4Broker make the tool very flexible.

Merge tool is good visually and it works well to integrate changes from multiple branches, it is very functional.

Integration with Visual Studio IDE, SlickEdit, and other programming IDE is good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Labels are too easy to change, it cannot be used to identify official release for us.

The fact that directory are not a controlled object in Helix (at least when not using Streams) force us to create dummy files to introduce file architecture for a project.

It would also be good support directory link, like Linux system (this is maybe possible with Workspace views but it was not that easy or even not functionning for our projects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ease of use, ease to admin. The capability of Helix to handle such a huge code base of the company with so much of features to offer. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Swarm allows a lot of automation with shelved changes (as opposed to committed changes), to more easily identify change origins from integrations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My favorite aspect is the ability to interact with 3rd party software or even with our own in-house-built applications. Additionally, the ability to use it at my own home-owned server to test various aspects is just fun to do. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Honestly, there are a few small things that annoy me about the product, but they are so easily worked around that I can't even remember what they are. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. You can use Helix VCS as is for keeping version control of software. You can also use the Helix VCS server by installing a middle-ware, which gives you the capability of git command line to access the repository.

2. We also used the "Forwarding Replica Servers" for distributed sites. If you use ClearCase Multi-sites, you will realize that the designed from Helix VCS is maintenance free. You only need to setup it up once and you're done. As for ClearCase Multi-sites, you are required to learn how to use the ClearCase Mastership.

3. The final thing I want to mention is the support from Helix VCS support team is second to none. Making a great product and the support team is paramount in a "Mission Critical Application" in the software industry. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is a learning a learning curve on how to manage git server using Helix CVS.

Once you learn how it operates, it works as advertised. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Helix ecosystem of products (server and clients) is mature and stable and because of its paradigm of not tracking local file edits it is fast. The GUI clients make it easy for a wide variety of users (in our case, engineers, artists, game designers and sound designers) to understand source control.

The APIs and triggers on submits allow sophisticated tools to be built to streamline the development process.

The 24/7 response team always quickly answers queries.

The Helix Swarm tool is great for code reviews.

The free 20 user option allows you to try it out though it does take some effort to set the server up well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My main issue with Helix as that the clients are not updated very often and a number of issues with the user interface have remained unaddressed for years. Also the MacOS client is much less stable than the Windows client.

In our particular use case where we use Unity the integration between Perforce and Unity is still in need of further work though it is useable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Perforce is feature full and allows us to do pretty much what we want to do. It helps with our productivity and to manage the data of our large scale productions.

I like the UI tool (P4V) but also a the command line tool option which we use extensively in our continuous integration system.

The new Helix4Git is also a new and interesting feature within Helix Core.

Easy to administer user and group rights. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is a little bit of a learning curve when new people join our teams and they do not have Perforce knowledge. It is somewhat different from other version control systems like Git.

Not worth it if you have a smaller team with smaller projects, something like GitLab would be more suitable.. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are three things that I especially like

- the revision graph view is excellent, and very nice to get an overview.

- p4merge visual layout

- The fact that there is no shadow folder, like in subversion or git Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The way workspace view is setup. It is very often the biggest obstacle when introducing new users.

Also, it is very annoying that there is no easy way to download something from perforce, e.g. with a oneliner. If I have the p4 commandline installed,, and credentials, I think you should be able to download something, just to current directly, e.g. like git clone and them rm .git Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Perforce can handle heavy artifacts like it is cakewalk and the security settings along with permission system is really comprehensive, best suited for large organizations which need good security. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The distributed features are not inherent to the VCS and traditionally it is a Client-Server VCS remodeled to copy features from git. I feel there should be more self-innovated features rather than just copying git. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

P4V made life easy with visual version control.

Added Swarm review improved our code quality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some times it asks for P4V password while doing some operations. But there is no way to authenticate password. Only way is to change password.

Swarm is good, for big teams there are high chances same file modified by other people same time.

After Swarm review approved and if we merge others changes it asks for review again. This blocks our check-in for review again delays our development time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Generally, I like that Helix operates well at large scales; I have to support almost 1000 users, and the performance problems are much smaller than they could be. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I have major issues with the integration functionality, two specific problems in particular. For one thing, the fact that Helix is smart enough to recognize when files have been moved, but by default chooses not to use that power in integration, seems fatally flawed. Second, it is bizarre to me that the only way to undo an integration is to delete metadata; Helix provides both "rollback" and "backout" capabilities, but none of those touch the integration history, which inevitably leads to the situation where a developer wants to back out changes and then re-integrate from trunk, but is forced to perform an elaborate hopscotch routine of integrations, backouts, and re-backouts to do so. This is absurd Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Perforce is a solid VCS. Its centralized nature makes it faster and more scalable than git or mercurial, but its merge tracking is far better than Subversion's. It's very reliable too. It also comes with a decent built-in code review tool, Swarm. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

p4d is proprietary software, with all the attendant problems. It's needlessly difficult to install, because Perforce doesn't understand how the OSS community distributes software. Worst of all, after many years Perforce dropped support for our operating system, FreeBSD. They even accept payment for our license renewal without telling us that they were abandoning it. Now we're in a bind. We can't easily migrate away from Perforce because it stores merge tracking information in a way that is incompatible with other VCS tools. Worst of all, we have good reason to believe that newer versions of p4d aren't using any APIs unavailable on FreeBSD. So if we had source access, we could simply recompile it. But that sadly isn't an option with proprietary software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Perforce is fast and I know exactly which repository to start looking at... there is only one and we have it replicated to multiple sites providing rapid access to users all over the world with lower bandwidth requirements.

Perforce support is amazing. They really take the time to help with workflows, understanding how to build a more efficient pipeline and many other things.

The Auditing capabilities allows us to see how people are using the product and helps us find trends. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Perforce upgrades could be more automatic, but I like the security of knowing what versions are running. We Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's fast and easy to track the changes my team is making to our repo. I can quickly look at the history of an asset and manage a large number of branches with relative ease. Simple enough for almost anyone to use, but very powerful suite of options for customizing it to your team's needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some admin functions still require command prompts that require sifting through documentation and lots of trial and error to figure out. I wish it were easier to lock/unlock checked-out files with admin privileges. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Perforce (Helix) is one of the best source control providers for medium to large projects and companies, especially those who need tight security. Their product suite has expanded to cover other needs like code inspections and git services which make it a more complete solution.. Many top tier companies rely on it, The ability to handle very large files is a must for us. They offer a free tier for up to 5 users which is a great way to get started. Every time i have dealt with support they have been fast, efficient and often local. They are not afraid to reinvent themselves which in this market with competitors such as git and microsoft team services is a must. They also offer service licences which is good to not have to use admin accounts for core services. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While they offer the main perforce server on windows, other services must be deployed to Linux machines such as gitfusion. Setting up some of these services require a lot of experience and I had to have a few support calls (which were some of the best I've had and local to my country Australia) to get going. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Being able to shelve changes and unshelve them on other branches and other machines is fantastic. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The UI can be a little slow. The fuel gauge in the bottom right of the window seems to bear no relation to reality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Helix is a state of the art tool which allows a lot of flexibility and is very fast. Many of the recent releases put out by Perforce Software, the maker of Helix, have given it similar capabilities to Git: distributed VCS aspects, the ability of using a Git client through Git Fusion, or the ability to connect it to GitLab, a solution similar to GitHub or BitBucket.

The level of support offered with a Helix license is unparalleled. Bugs are fixed in a timely fashion and each major release brings about many exciting new features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The initial learning curve is a tiny bit steeper than some of the other version control solutions. The concept of workspaces takes a little effort to fully understand, but it is workspaces which also make Helix more flexible than some of the other solutions out there. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I can have one massive repository (depot) or lots of small ones. I can control exactly which parts of any depots I want to download, I don't have to sync an entire depot. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some of the IDE plugins (third party) can be immature and sometimes buggy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Our repository is very large due to the various binaries we store. This eliminates many of our other options out there. Our studio of veteran game developers have been working with P4 throughout their professional careers. After a brief stint with SVN and Git, it was nice to come back home to P4. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I wish P4 had its own depot hosting service that could accomodate out very large repository Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.