Guide

A tour of p4-web, from login to submit. If you haven't installed it yet, the quickstart gets a server running in under a minute.

All screenshots show a demo depot (//rocket) with fictional users and changelists — your instance will show your own server's data, filtered by your Perforce protections.

p4 login

step 1

Log in with your Perforce account

Credentials are exchanged for a p4 login ticket — the password itself is never stored. If your site uses long-lived tickets, you can paste a ticket value in place of the password, Swarm-style. The server address shown under the logo is the instance's P4PORT.

p4-web login screen with user and password fields — Login — user + password, or user + pasted ticket

p4 dirs

step 2

Browse the depot

The collapsible tree on the left stays in sync with deep links, P4V-style. Listings show revision, changelist, type and modified time — click a column header to sort. The ☆ button saves the current path as a favorite; favorites become a dashboard on the root page. Directories with a README render it below the listing.

Depot browser with tree sidebar, breadcrumbs, and a sortable file listing — Depot browser — tree, breadcrumbs, sortable listing

p4 print

step 3

Read files

Syntax highlighting works offline (vendored highlight.js). The revision dropdown re-renders the file at any revision; Raw and Download serve the exact bytes. Click a line number to copy a permalink or start an inline comment thread. Markdown files get a Rendered/Source toggle.

File viewer showing syntax-highlighted Python with line numbers, revision dropdown, and comment box — File viewer — Content · History · Annotate · Graph tabs

p4 annotate

step 4

Blame, with a time machine

The Annotate tab shows the changelist and author that last touched every line — click through to the full change. The slider in the header is a time-lapse: drag it to re-blame the file as it stood at any earlier revision.

Annotate view with per-line changelist and author gutter and a revision time-lapse slider — Annotate — per-line change + author, time-lapse slider

p4 diff2

step 5

Compare revisions

Unified and side-by-side views everywhere a diff appears; the toggle remembers your preference. Pick arbitrary revision pairs from the History tab, or diff whole directory trees with Folder diff (optionally pinned to an @change or @date).

Side-by-side diff of two revisions with added and removed lines highlighted — Diff — side-by-side, arbitrary revision pairs

p4 changes

step 6

Find changes

Filter submitted or pending changelists by user, path, filename, description text, or date range. Description and filename search run against a per-user local index (the ⚡ bar) that respects your protections and updates incrementally — searches over thousands of changes come back instantly.

Changes view with filter bar, index status bar, and a list of changelists — Changes — filters + indexed description/filename search

p4 submit

step 7

Edit and submit

My Changes is your personal pending-changelist page, backed by a server-side workspace created on demand. From any file page, Edit or Delete opens the file into a changelist; here you can:

edit text files in the web editor, or upload new/replacement files (binary-safe)
shelve and unshelve, or delete the shelf
revert single files or the whole changelist
submit — behind a confirmation that lists exactly what will land

You can only touch your own p4-web changelists, and every write is recorded in an audit log.

My Changes detail page with description editor, file list with actions, and submit/shelve buttons — My Changes — web editor, upload, shelve, submit