TrustRadius Insights for Perforce Helix Core are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
Users have adopted various revision control packages like Perforce, Git, and SVN to develop and store data independently. Perforce serves as the backbone of version control for builds, ensuring everyone has the latest content and code. It is easy to get started with Perforce, allowing users to pull the files they want. However, it can be challenging to perform more complex tasks like branching and integrating. Nevertheless, Perforce supports a rich GUI for most tasks and a command-line interface for automated or advanced tasks, making it suitable for users with varying technical proficiency.
Perforce is accessible globally and externally to product licensees, supporting all major features like branching, shelving, and p4web. The visual client of Perforce is user-friendly, presenting the directory structure conveniently and consistently across platforms. Its merge optimization feature is highly useful for day-to-day operations, providing efficient code merging capabilities. This makes Perforce ideal for agile development, big data services, and marketing materials across thousands of automotive dealerships.
Moreover, Perforce is scalable and suitable for small to enterprise-level projects. It integrates well within a .Net environment and is leveraged by several departments to track changes in software, documentation, and assets, providing quick access to change history and approvals. In industries like healthcare, Perforce Helix Core serves as the source control management system of choice for corporate products, internal applications, custom code, and configurations. Beyond version control purposes, Perforce is also used for collaboration and sharing software between independent developer groups within and across different lab sites. In addition to its version control capabilities, Perforce ensures the integrity of code bases by providing backup and revision control features.
Each lab site has its own set of developers that operates independently but we are moving towards more collaboration and sharing software between the groups. One site has standardized on Perforce and won't do any software development without using it and other sites are now moving towards using it based upon the experience of the current Perforce users. We use it not only for multi-developer teams but also as a way to back up code bases and do revision control.
Pros
Version control
Source code control
Automated builds
Cons
Difficulty of setup
Multiple packages needed for installation
Lack of available training
Likelihood to Recommend
Once you get used to it, it is straightforward to use and it has a very large feature set for a free software package. It is free for small teams to use, which helps with a larger adoption later down the road. Also, Perforce seems to be the defacto industry standard so once you learn it, you should be able to use it at other developer positions.
Being a large company that spans many continents, and having merged with other companies in the past, we have many different groups who've decided on how they develop and store data all on their own. Because of these seemingly independent choices, we've adopted the use of various revision control packages, including Perforce, as well as the popular host of other options, such as Git and SVN. Each package brings advantages as well as hindrances, from the very easy to get start but not as well supported nor portable SVN, to the very portable yet hard to work with and get going Git; and finally Perforce, a sort of in-between: easy to get started and pull the files you want, yet difficult to perform more complicated tasks such as branching and integrating. Supporting a rich GUI for most tasks, as well as a command-line interface for automated or more complicated tasks, Perforce can find favor with users of varying need and technical proficiency.
Pros
Perforce has a feature rich GUI making it somewhat easy to find files, and historical changes, as well as utility features to better visualize changes over time.
The concept of change lists, client specs, and branches is unique to a large extent, and adds value in high customization for each user.
Perforce is well supported, and has plenty of information on use both officially, and through other user experience as documented on the web.
Cons
Perforce tends to feel backwards in how it approaches certain tasks, like branching and integrating - even once you figure out how it wants you to perform these tasks, you will likely forget when it comes around to the next time you need to do them again.
Perforce has a higher price tag, comparatively.
Perforce make some tasks very easy, and yet other tasks very difficult - it doesn't always seem to have found its target user's proficiency.
Likelihood to Recommend
The most important question to answer when choosing between Perforce and other [version control] packages is how technically proficient your users will be. Most developers can easily get the file they need, while some will want more specific file sets and will need some assistance or documentation to get their client spec just the way they want. For managers, who tend to be less technically on average, they will probably need much more help up front and over time. And for either of these groups, certain tasks will become difficult, however Perforce is processional and robust, and those who have the time and patience will come to appreciate the added power at their fingertips.
