Perforce has released an open source version of P4CLI, its command-line interface to the company's P4D versioning engine. In line with this release, the firm has also open sourced a version of P4Web, its web-based versioning client.
Pushing the "customizability sell" quite heavily, the company describes a world where developers will now be able to customize these clients for their specific needs.
All these open source projects are available immediately on Perforce Workshop, an open source community built and hosted by Perforce.
As a command-line interface, P4CLI is used by developers (and DevOps) for "core versioning functionality" — it can also be used to build customized tools, plug-ins, and automation.
P4Web is the web client for P4D. This is designed to allow developers to perform standard versioning operations as part of daily workflows through web browsers.
The firm argues that "greater source code access enables a more streamlined development pipeline" through customized clients for a variety of hardware and platforms.
Perforce has already open sourced other popular clients including P4Perl, P4Ant, and P4Win.
"Open source has been part of our DNA since the company's inception. In fact, we released Jam, an open source alternative to Make, before the term open source was mainstream," said Christopher Seiwald, founder and CEO at Perforce. "Perforce Workshop was built using P4D and Perforce's code review and collaboration tool, Swarm.
