问题
Is anyone aware of of anybody offering hosted perforce servers? It doesn't have to be free - but preferably not too expensive!
My understanding of Perforce is that it's free to use for personal projects, which mine is. Currently I have a perforce server setup on the same machine as the code is on which doesn't offer much security in case of computer failure.
If not, can anyone recommend one of the alternative solutions that is similar to Perforce? I have experience of SVN but cannot say I enjoy the experience.
回答1:
You can use Perforce for free with up to 2 Users and if you have to you can even share one account with several users, although it's a little inconvenient to do so (and it might be a license violation).
Personally i installed Perforce server on my Internet machine which is up 24/7. I'm using a dynamic DNS service to allow others to connect to my Perforce server using a sane address like "myperforceserver.no-ip.org:1666". My upstream is 1.5 MBit/s though so that's a speed others can work with on their end but if you happen to have no more than 128 kbit/s it can be a little slow. But it really depends on the project size. Plus there are ways to make working with a slow connection to Perforce easier, like the "reconcile offline work" menu item or by using a Perforce proxy.
I concur that SVN seems like a PITA when you come from a Perforce background. As soon as you do a lot of branching and merging, Perforce is still heaven compared to any other SC system.
回答2:
You may be able to run Perforce on Amazon's EC2 platform. Unless your codebase is really huge, you should be able to use the AWS Free Usage Tier.
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing
This is in some respects better than a paid for service, in that you'll have full control over the Perforce server instance, plus the freedom to switch to another CVS if something better comes along.
回答3:
perforce hosting free for first 17 users www.assembla.com
回答4:
This is interesting. But not sure if anyone is providing this as a professional service yet.
Running a Perforce Server in the Cloud - How to Start a Perforce Server in Amazon EC2
Perforce Cloud Solutions
回答5:
If your concern is having the server & client on the same machines, then maybe you could just use something like Dropbox or Live Mesh to back your files up continuously to the cloud?
If you do so, then my advice would be to run a regular checkpointing scheme (say every night), and store those files & and rsync of the depot files to a Dropbox folder so they get pushed out automatically. If you're after a simple script to do the backup & checkpointing, then I've written something that should get you started. See this link
回答6:
A would love to pay for a Perforce on a reasonable subscription basis, too. Had no luck to find any such provider, too. I think it would be a good way for Perforce to promote their tool. $740 is just to steep to lure in people. Sad to see, as I still consider it the best cvs out there (in terms of having control and getting work done).
I also have (for a personal project) a locally installed Perforce.
As for file security: Well, back up the entire Perforce Folder and whereever P4ROOT resides (normally in that folder) on a regular basis. Shut down the Perforce service before you do, fire up afterwards. On Windows, I found Cobian backup to be a great tool, to do all that in combination. I am not sure, if Perforce would be ok with "on the fly" backup, I am just not taking the risk.
Such regular full backups should be considered mandatory, even if your Server resided in Fort Knox. After all, there is hard disk failure but also the possibiity that your perforce structure gets corrupted. Although I can't tell of a single such incident with Perforce.
回答7:
FYI, the newest Perforce licensing allows Perforce to be used for free in 2 options: 1) (as before), 2 users, unlimited files 2) unlimited number of users, but limited to at most 1000 files
回答8:
Perforce is free for up to 20 workspaces. http://www.perforce.com/try/perforce-software-version-management.
I have a server setup on a hosting hertzner.de which is a virtual, and cost 20 bucks a month, you could do it for less..
Setting up the p4 server is easy, the backup script was a bit complex so here is mine as an example
#
# Perforce backup script
#
DIR=/home/p4/backups/depot_`date +%Y%m%d`
mkdir $DIR
# Check point the server then backup the ckeckpoint and the depot
p4d -r /home/p4/var/root -jc -J /home/p4/var/journal.dat
mv /home/p4/var/root/checkpoint.* $DIR
gzip $DIR/checkpoint.*
mv /home/p4/var/root/journal.* $DIR
gzip $DIR/journal.*
# copy the depot files to the same place
cd /home/p4/var/root
tar cfz $DIR/depot.tar.gz depot
p4d runs with a one liner in rc.local, as does stunnel.
If performance is a problem set up a perforce proxy. You download p4p and start it with a one liner. This way you get the speed of a local server for checkouts, and code is kept offsite.
Its a lot less hassle to setup a p4 server than a svn server.
If your code is Open Source you can host ant github or sourceforge. git and perforce play nicely together so you can use both on the same code base on the same working copy.
回答9:
Wouldn't backing up the machine (online) be simpler and achieve the same result?
With the backup route:
- You get the speed & responsiveness of a local Perforce server.
- Backup protects more than just Perforce.
- There are more backup solutions so it's easier to find one that fits your needs.
回答10:
From Perforce Licensing & Pricing the first 20 users are at $740 per user. This drops to $270/user after 10k users. And that doesn't include the other hosting costs or Perforce support.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2397642/online-perforce-repositories