A status update on Perforce actions under FB 6.x
Our FB projects have been around awhile, and were using the deprecated P4 actions. I have started migrating them to the new, modern P4 actions.
I like the new Perforce actions a lot. They greatly simplify our build, and offer better support of the perforce feature set. (That is the pat on the back!)
I have observed, however, that the new actions are significantly slower than the old actions for "forced sync" operations (this is the only operation I have measured).
In our environment, the sync operation is the slowest (and most painful) part of the build. For a number of reasons, we must do a "forced sync" to recopy a LARGE amount of data (1000's of files, GB's of data) from the perforce server down to the build system. It takes 5-10 minutes.
It hurts.
Anyway, I am always watching the performance of the sync operation. I had hoped (without reason, I confess, but hope springs...) that the new P4 sync action would be faster. In fact, it appeared slower.
So I set up a side by side test. I had a single FB project, with two actions:
- Deprecated Sync (forced)
- New Sync (forced)
Of the same directory. I chose a dir struct that takes about 60 seconds to sync.
I ran the test several times. Then I reversed the order of the syncs (to put the new action first).
I found, consistently, that the new Sync action is 20% slower than deprecated sync.
Thought you should know!