I'm doing a script for clean history and revision of selected files.
I change the FileType of a binary file to binary+S3, so this file will now just keep the 3 last revision.
When i use this method i always see on my depot files history of others revisions but they are now "purge", instead of using the p4 obliterate function which delete all revisions and dont keep some "purge" revisions.
My question : What is the differents between a file which on all revisions expect 5 are deleted and a file using the +S5 attribute.
Thanks !
If you use 'p4 delete', the file is logically deleted, but the previous revision remains in the repository and so you can access it by specifying that previous revision explicitly.
If you use a filetype such as +S, the previous revision is purged from the repository and you cannot sync your workspace to that previous revision.
That is, purging old revisions saves on disk space on the server, but means you can't access those old versions anymore.
The difference between purged revisions and obliterated revisions is that the history of the purged revision remains, so you know when that revision was submitted and by which changelist, etc., whereas with obliterated revisions Perforce can tell you nothing about those older revisions. Obliterating saves even more disk space on the server, but of course does so by removing even more information.