Richard G.
RG
Richard G.
Senior Software Design Engineer
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"Affortable source control solution with good visual interface that ease my software development."
4.5/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

Verified User in Computer Software
UC
Verified User in Computer Software
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Intermediate Software QA"
5/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

Jordan T.
JT
Jordan T.
Senior Software Support Analyst
Oil & Energy
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Integrates well, is easy to use, is great for the company"
5/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

BP
Brian P.
Staff Release Engineer
Wireless
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"Mission Critical Tool for Company that does Software Development"
5/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

Rajan T.
RT
Rajan T.
Chief Technology Officer
Computer Games
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Game Development with Helix (Perforce) Source Control"
4/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

Nicola F.
NF
Nicola F.
Release and Build Technical Lead - Technology Group
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Fast and reliable version control system"
4.5/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

Tommy S.
TS
Tommy S.
Postdoc
Research
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Overall positive once the helix quirks has been learned"
4/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

Ankit M.
AM
Ankit M.
Sr. Systems Engineer
Information Technology and Services
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"High Performance Version Control for heavy lifting!"
4/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

Gnana Sekhar S.
GS
Gnana Sekhar S.
Principal Software Engineer
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Perforce performance is good with with Helix"
4/5
What do you like best about P4?

P4V made life easy with visual version control.

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

What do you dislike about P4?

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.

Verified User in Computer Software
AC
Verified User in Computer Software
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Integration functionality is fundamentally flawed"
1.5/5
What do you like best about P4?

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.

What do you dislike about P4?

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.