Can you “ignore” a file in Perforce?

Question

I sometimes use the feature \'Reconcile Offline Work...\' found in Perforce\'s P4V IDE to sync up any files that I have been working on while disconnected from the P4 depot.

Answer 1

If you want a solution that will apply to all work-spaces without needing to be copied around, you (or your sysadmin) can refuse submission of those file-types through using lines like the below in the p4 protect table:

write user * * -//.../*.suo
write user * * -//.../*.obj
write user * * -//.../*.ccscc

I remember doing this before, but I don't have the necessary permissions to test this here. Check out Perforce's Sysadmin guide and try it out

Answer 2

Perforce Streams makes ignoring files much easier, as of version 2011.1. According to the documentation, you can ignore certain extensions or certain paths in your directory.

From p4 help stream

Ignored: Optional; a list of file or directory names to be ignored in
                 client views. For example:

                     /tmp      # ignores files named 'tmp'
                     /tmp/...  # ignores dirs named 'tmp'
                     .tmp      # ignores file names ending in '.tmp'

                 Lines in the Ignored field may appear in any order.  Ignored
                 names are inherited by child stream client views.

This essentially does what @raven's answer specifies, but is done easier with streams, as it automatically propagates to every work-space using that stream. It also applies to any streams inheriting from the stream in which you specify the ignore types.

You can edit the stream via p4 stream //stream_depot/stream_name or right-clicking the stream in p4v's stream view.

And as @svec noted, the ability to specify ignore files per workspace is coming soon, and is in fact in P4 2012.1 beta.

Answer 3

This works as of Perforce 2013.1, the new P4IGNORE mechanism was first added in release, 2012.1, described on the Perforce blog here:

https://www.perforce.com/blog/new-20121-p4ignore

As it's currently described, you set an environment variable "P4IGNORE" to a filename which contains a list of the files to ignore.

So you can check it out to see how you like it.

Answer 4

HISTORICAL ANSWER - no longer correct. At the time this was written originally it was true;

You can not write and check in a file that the server will use to make ignore rules; general glob or regexp file pattern ignore in perforce.

Other answers have global server configurations that are global (and not per folder). The other answers show things that might work for you, if you want one line in your view per folder times number of extensions you want to ignore in that single folder, or that provide this capability in WebSphere Studio plugins only, or provide capability for server administrators, but not available to users.

In short, I find Perforce really weak in this area. While I appreciate that those who use the Eclipse Plugin can use .p4ignore, and I think that's great, it leaves those of us that don't, out in the dark.

UPDATE: See accepted answer for new P4IGNORE capability added mid-2012.

Answer 5

If you are using the Eclipse Perforce plugin, then the plugin documentation lists several ways to ignore files.

Answer 6

I'm looking for a .p4ignore like solution as well (and not one tied to a particular IDE). Thus far, the closest thing I've found is p4delta. It sounds like it will do exactly what the original poster was asking, albeit through another layer of indirection.

http://p4delta.sourceforge.net

Unfortunately, while this does seem to produce the proper list of files, I can't get "p4delta --execute" to work ("Can't modify a frozen string") and the project has not been updated in year. Perhaps others will have better luck.