Locks for files you can't merge
You know the Git ecosystem falls short here.
Perforce was the industrial-strength solution used by leading global companies, especially in games.
Find out here if Plastic is the alternative you need.
We have helped many teams find an alternative to Perforce. Chances are you need to modernize your tools, but there are things in P4 you still need, correct?
You know the Git ecosystem falls short here.
Just sync what you need with a simple GUI. We call it Gluon mode.
The alternatives shouldn't break when a repo goes past a few gigabytes.
Sometimes you just don't need the extra push.
Switching to something just like Perforce wouldn't make sense. Here is why teams move to Plastic.
Streams improved a few things, but they are not as good as Git yet. Plastic is all about task branches and can deal with complex merges.
Plastic is a distributed version control system and it can also work fully centralized. Think of it as Git workflows at P4 scale.
Semantic diff and merge tools that understand the code, which is a few steps ahead of good-old p4merge. Branch visualization and improved GUIs.
This is one of the key reasons behind the migration from Perforce. Mergebots are our DevOps orchestrator solution.
It is not easy to host P4 in the cloud. Plastic offers a native solution run directly by us.
Let us show you some numbers of how Plastic compares to Perforce and Git in terms of pure speed. Because a well-run P4 installation was super fast, and that's something you can't lose.
Plastic is 5.2 times faster than Perforce Helix Core doing add + checkin.
Plastic is 5.3 times faster than Git consider that Git is checking in locally while Plastic is sending data through the network from client to server.
Even with streams, branching large codebases is a problem. This is not an issue in Plastic.
Plastic tracks moves and renames precisely, and it is able to merge them correctly. This makes a huge difference.
You need P4 reconcile to find local changes, and it is slow and error prone.
Regular branches in P4 were just directories and that made them unmanageable. Streams impose too many restrictions and can't really show evolution through time. Check the Branch Explorer in Plastic to see how easy it is to understand the evolution.
Plastic | Perforce | Git | Subversion | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Flexibility |
Good to work centralized
Just checkin, no push/pull
|
Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Good to work distributed
Push/pull + local repo
|
Yes | No | Yes | Can't do | |
Binaries |
Good with huge repos
|
Yes | Yes | No | Not really |
Good with huge files
|
Yes | Yes | No | Sometimes | |
Can lock files to avoid merging
Binaries, art, documents
|
Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
GUI |
Visualizes your repos
So that you don't need a PhD in branching
|
Yes
It's our core strength |
Nope | Nope | Nope |
Comes with great GUIs
|
|
Well Compare with ours | Uh-oh | Uh-oh | |
Special GUI & workflow for artists
And anyone not a coder
|
Gluon! | No | No | No | |
Workflow |
Can really do task branches
Thousands of branches, no matter what
|
Yes | Nope |
Core could
Tools??? uh-oh |
Nope |
Merge |
Very good at detecting merges between branches
|
Yes | Not really | Yes | Painful |
Comes with great diff and 3-way merge tools
|
Super Good Our job |
Yes But compare with Plastic |
No Go grab one |
No Go grab one |
|
Tools to help you understand the merge (a preview)
|
Yep | Uh-oh | What tools? | Uh-oh | |
Good merging renames, moved files, directories, crazy refactors
|
My job |
|
|
|
|
Cloud |
Can host repos in the cloud
|
Yes Plastic Cloud |
Some providers do |
Superb GitHub/Lab/etc. |
Some providers do |
Cloud hosting is good with huge repos
|
Yes |
|
|
|
|
Diff |
Can diff code moved across files
|
Yup |
|
|
|
Can show you the history of a method
|
Yup |
|
|
|
|
You can reach the engineers
|
Here we are |
|
Try to reach
Linus |
|
Plastic | Perforce | SVN | TFS | Hg | Git | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Score | 85 | 55 | 0 | 40 | 40 | 60 |
Move/change | Yes | Issues | Fail | Yes | Yes | Yes Issue with complex cases |
Change/delete | Yes | Yes | Fail | Fail With complex cases | Yes | Yes |
Move/delete | Yes |
Issues with complex cases |
Fail |
Issues when directories are involved |
Fail When directories are involved |
Issues with complex cases |
Divergent move | Yes | Yes | Fail | Fail With directories | Issue | Issue |
Cycle move | Yes | Yes | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail |
Move/add | Yes | Fail In complex, issues with simple | Fail | Fail In some cases | Fail | Issue |
Added evil twin | Issues | Yes | Fail | Yes | Yes | Yes |
We have an ad-hoc importer to move depots from Perforce to Plastic SCM. Very often Perforce depots are huge (something especially true for game studios, where gigabytes of data are not uncommon), so we prefer to provide full assistance.
It is very simple: you contact us and we help you with the process.
Our P4 exporter works in two directions: it can import from Perforce to Plastic, and export from Plastic to Perforce.
Very often teams need to migrate gradually. They move part of the project to Plastic while the rest of the team still stays in P4. Normally, they use a branch as the rendezvous point for this; they can checkin changes to this branch in P4 to deliver changes, pull it to Plastic, and vice-versa - make changes in Plastic and push them to the P4 "sync" branch.