Question

Is it preferred to have one depot with multiple folders which map to different paths in a workspace. OR multiple folders in one depot that map to multiple workspaces, or multiple depots to multiple workspaces.

Does anyone have any practical advice on the matter?

I’ve also noticed that when I have multiple folders in a depot that map to different paths in my workspace when i diff from the depot a change in one of the sub folders does not show up in the diff.

Answer 1

Depending on the size of your depots I think it is more a question of taste. We have currently two different depots, but mainly because they are disjunctive in their nature (//sw vs. //data/). The Perforce Knowledge Base says:

The most significant difference with
the multiple depot configuration is
that, in the Perforce Server P4ROOT
directory, each project is stored in
its own top-level depot directory
(rather than as a subdirectory of a
single depot). The multiple depot
configuration allows you to use the
depot “Map” field to put each
top-level depot directory on a
separate filesystem, if desired. More
on using the Map field can be found in
the Command Reference entry for the p4
depot command.

Performance is another consideration
in configuring single vs. multiple
depots. By splitting projects into
separate depots, file paths for many
Perforce operations are inherently
limited to a more narrow range of
files, resulting in reduced need to
scan certain database tables. The
performance difference is dependent on
the particular data sets and usage.
For many small installations, there is
no appreciable difference. However,
for larger installations and for some
usage environments, the performance
difference might be significant.