Perforce (AWZ Server Lightsail Windows Instance) - Unreal Engine Source Control - Move Perforce Depot

Question

I'll give a bit of a background as to the setup we have and why. Currently myself and a friend want to collaborate on an Unreal Engine Project. To do this I've set up an Amazon Lightsail Instance with Windows Server running. I've then installed Perforce onto this Server and added two users. Both of us are able to connect to this server from our local machines (great I thought!). Our goal was to attach two 'virtual' disks of 32gb to this server via Lightsails Storage option. I've formatted these discs and they are detected as Disk D and E on the Server. Our goal was to have two depots, one on Disk E and one on Disk D, the reason for this being the C disk was only 20gb (12gb Free after Windows).

I have tried multiple things (not got much hair left after this) to try and map the depots created to each HDD but have had little success and need your wisdom!

I've followed both the process indicated in this support guide (https://community.perforce.com/s/article/2559) via CMD as well as changing the depot storage location in P4Admin on the Server via RDP to the virtual disks D and E respectively. Example change is from //UE_WIP/... to D:/UE_WIP/... (I have create a folder UE_WIP and UE_LIVE on each HDD).

When I open up P4V on my local machine I'm able to happily connect (as per screenshot) and set workstation to my local machine (detects both depots). This is when we're getting stuck. I then open up a new unreal engine file and save the unreal engine file to the the following local directory E:/DELETE/Perforce/Test/ and open up source control (See image 04). This is great, it detects the workspace and all is connecting to the server.

When I click submit to source control I get the following 'Failed Checking Source Control' when I try adding via P4V manually marking the new content folder for add I get the following 'file(s) not in client view.

All we want is the ability to send an Unreal Engine up to either the WIP Drive Depot or the Live Drive Depot. To resolve this does it require: Two different workstations (one set up for LIVE and one for WIP) Do we need to add some local folders to our directory? E:/DELETE/Perforce/UE_WIP & E:/DELETE/Perforce/UE_LIVE? Do we need to tweak something on the Perforce Server? Do we need to tweak something in Unreal Engine?

Any and all help would be massively appreciated.

Best,

Ben

https://imgur.com/a/aaMPTvI - Image gallery of issues

Answer 1

Your screenshots don't show how (or if?) you set up your local workspace (i.e. the thing that tells Perforce where the files are on your local workstation).

See: https://www.perforce.com/perforce/r13.1/manuals/p4v/Defining_a_client_view.html

The Perforce server acts as a layer of abstraction between the backend storage (i.e. the depots you've set up) and the client machines where you actually do your work. The location of the depot files doesn't matter at all to the client (any more than, say, the backend filesystem of a web server matters to your web browser); all that matters is how you set up the workspace, which is a simple matter of "here's where my local files are" (the Root) and "here's how my local paths map to depot paths" (the View).

You get the "file not in view" error if you try to add a local file to the depot and it's not in the View you've defined. The fix there is generally to simply fix the Root and/or View to accurately describe where you local files are. One View can easily map to multiple depots (as long as they're on a single server).

(edit)

Specifically, in your case, all of the files you're trying to add are under the path:

E:\DELETE\Perforce\Test\Saved\...

Since you've set up your workspace as:

Client: bsmith
Root: E:\DELETE\Perforce\bsmith
View:
    //WIP/... //bsmith/WIP/...
    //LIVE/... //bsmith/LIVE/...

then your bsmith workspace consists of these two local paths:

E:\DELETE\Perforce\bsmith\WIP\...
E:\DELETE\Perforce\bsmith\LIVE\...

The files you're trying to add aren't even under your Root, much less under either of the View mappings. That's what the "not in client view" error messages mean.

If you want to add the files where they are, modify your Root and View so that you define your workspace as being where your files are; if you want to have the files in one of the local directories above that you've already defined as being where your workspace lives, you'll have to move them there. If you put your files in bsmith\WIP, then when you add them they'll go to the WIP depot; if you put them in bsmith\LIVE, then they'll go to the LIVE depot, per your View.

Either way, once they're in your workspace, you can add them to the depot. Simple as that!