How to delete a perforce client with pending changelist

Question

I have a workspace in perforce in which I made some files mark for delete. Now I want to delete that workspace forcefully.

But I don't have admin rights. How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Run p4 opened to see all your opened files and run p4 revert to revert them.

Then run p4 changes -c your-client-name -s pending to see all your pending changelists. Since in the first step you reverted all your open files, these changelists will all be empty. Run p4 change -d change-number to delete each empty pending changelist.

Then you can run p4 client -d to delete your client.

Answer 2

Why it's only 11 clicks in P4V, through an arbitrary sequence of menu items.

1. Right click on the changelist
2. Delete shelved files
3. 'Yes'
4. Right click on the changelist
5. Remove all jobs
6. Right click on the changelist
7. Revert files
8. 'Revert'
9. Right click on the changelist
10. Delete pending changelist
11. 'Yes'

Let's send Perforce to usability school.

Answer 3

Here's a scriptable procedure for deleting a Perforce client. Use with care: this deletes all your work in progress on the client!

1. Revert all changed files on this client.

   p4 -c $CLIENT revert -k //...
   

   Note the use of the -k option, which "marks the file as reverted in server metadata without altering files in the client workspace". Since we are going to delete the client later, we don't care about updating the client workspace. This speeds things up if you have many files open.

2. Delete all shelved files from pending changes associated with the client.

   p4 changes -s shelved -c $CLIENT | cut -d' ' -f2 |
   while read CHANGE; do p4 shelve -c $CHANGE -d //...; done
   

   If you never use p4 shelve you can omit this step.

3. All pending changes associated with the client are now empty. Delete them.

   p4 changes -s pending -c $CLIENT | cut -d' ' -f2 | p4 -b 1 -x - change -d
   

4. There are now no pending changes associated with the client. Delete the client.

   p4 client -d $CLIENT
   

(This process ought to be much easier! In particular, there seems no good reason why we have to delete shelved files associated with a client before deleting the client. If you find yourself struggling with this, do contact Perforce support and suggest that it be made simpler.)