Question

I would like to write some scripts in python that do some automated changes to source code. If the script determines it needs to change the file I would like to first check it out of perforce. I don’t care about checking in because I will always want to build and test first.

Answer 1

Perforce has Python wrappers around their C/C++ tools, available in binary form for Windows, and source for other platforms:

http://www.perforce.com/perforce/loadsupp.html#api

You will find their documentation of the scripting API to be helpful:

http://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.current/manuals/p4script/p4script.pdf

Use of the Python API is quite similar to the command-line client:

PythonWin 2.5.1 (r251:54863, May  1 2007, 17:47:05) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on win32. Portions Copyright 1994-2006 Mark Hammond - see 'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information. >>> import P4 >>> p4 = P4.P4() >>> p4.connect() # connect to the default server, with the default clientspec >>> desc = {'Description': 'My new changelist description', ...         'Change': 'new' ...         } >>> p4.input = desc >>> p4.run('changelist', '-i') ['Change 2579505 created.'] >>>  

I’ll verify it from the command line:

P:\>p4 changelist -o 2579505 # A Perforce Change Specification. # #  Change:      The change number. 'new' on a new changelist. #  Date:        The date this specification was last modified. #  Client:      The client on which the changelist was created.  Read-only. #  User:        The user who created the changelist. #  Status:      Either 'pending' or 'submitted'. Read-only. #  Description: Comments about the changelist.  Required. #  Jobs:        What opened jobs are to be closed by this changelist. #               You may delete jobs from this list.  (New changelists only.) #  Files:       What opened files from the default changelist are to be added #               to this changelist.  You may delete files from this list. #               (New changelists only.)  Change: 2579505  Date:   2008/10/08 13:57:02  Client: MYCOMPUTER-DT  User:   myusername  Status: pending  Description:         My new changelist description