How can I partially integrate a file in Perforce?

Question

I have a file on another branch which contain a change I would like to integrate. But it contains other changes too which I don't want to integrate yet.

How can I integrate the file only partially?

I first integrated and resolved the file as usual, then I did a "p4 edit" on the file after that to remove the changes I don't want to go in yet. "p4 opened" said that the file is opened for edit, so I thought the commit will submitted as an edit not an integration. I was wrong! It still updated the integration history! So if I attempt to integrate the rest of the changes later the perforce will say "all revisions integrated", and the only way to resolve the problem is integrating by disregarding the integration history, which is painful to resolve.

How can I avoid this next time?

EDIT:

To clarify I mean there are multiple changes in a single revision of file and I want to integrate only a part of it.

Samwise Samwise · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-04T18:26:41

(edited to reflect that the question is about partially integrating a revision, not integrating a single revision of a file)

Since a revision is the smallest atom of change in Perforce's metadata, you won't be able to record that a subset of a revision was integrated -- and since you don't want to record that the entire revision was integrated (thereby "ignoring" the rest of the revision for future integrations), rather than doing this as an integrate, I'd do it as an edit:

p4 edit target
p4 print -o theirs source#n
p4 print -o base source#n-1
p4 merge3 base theirs target > target
rm base theirs
(edit target)
p4 submit

Another option would be to initially open the file for integrate and then clear the resolve record by reverting (use the -k flag to keep local changes) and reopening for edit:

p4 integrate source#n,n target
p4 resolve
p4 revert -k target
p4 edit target

In general if there are multiple independent changes you're making to a file such that you might want to be able to cherry-pick and/or track them independently at a later date, submitting them as independent changelists will make that much much much easier. Shelving can help with this if you realize only after making a big change that it'd make more sense as a series of smaller changes -- shelve your big change, revert some parts, submit the smaller change, then unshelve the big change and continue.

How can I partially integrate a file in Perforce?

1 Answers