Question for those of out there who have tamed the CK version control beast.

I've been trying to set this up, and I noticed that http://www.perforce.com/downloads/try_perforce_free, the version control software used by beth is free for <20 users. So I was wondering if anyone had tried to use it with the CK. I haven't found any discussion of it yet, so I wondered if there was some dreadful pitfall no one has mentioned yet.

Of course it could be that all the collab projects using version control have >20 participants. Still, for a single coder who occasionally needs to merge esps from modellers and artists this could be very useful.

Wellp, I installed it.

Doesn't seem to help though. Specifically, it's expecting a p4com.dll which doesn't seem to be part of the install package. So probably either a beth extension, or something that's only in one of the for-pay packages.

Yes, P4 integration was stripped from the editor before release. You can still use it as an independent revision control system though.

Does the version control also allow you to do version control on the ESP itself, or just the script files? If it allows ESP to be versioned, that will be worth it!! I am tired of tracking down issus within the ESP itself!

Without perforce, I believe it just merges esp into esm files.

I could be wrong though, since I've not managed to get non-perforce version control working yet. I keep getting what look like 120s timeouts, which make me think its failing to find the local shares I set up.

The trouble is they're constant. Scroll the data window? two minute pause. Click on a file? Two minute pause.

I don't suppose anyone can recommend a better way to merge eps files?

Just in case it helps anyone, I found the problem with my CK version control setup.

Basically the shares were broken. I run winxp and some stupid update meant that shares by default force you to login as guest - and the guest account is disabled on my box.

I turned off "simple sharing" and used 127.0.0.1 instead of the host name and suddenly it works as quick as you like.

Sadly, that was around midnight last night so I've not tested the merging yet, but it's a step forward anyway.

I posted this in some other thread about version control...
But the P4Com dll can be downloaded (without viruses!) from online, i believe it's an open source dll that just makes calls straight to p4.exe
You have to download the dll and drop it into your skyrim directory.
I got this working on my machine, but there where certain issues i had

1) Bethesda uses a really weird p4 layout. And unless your p4 depot is organized identically to what they had, the creation kit p4 integration won''t work for you. I wish they put the p4 depot as a string in a config file, but unfortunately it looks like they hardcoded it. (actually, there may be an ini setting that can change this, but there's no way to tell without looking at the source )
2) You can't seem to activate perforce integration without also activating that stupid ESM merging feature. Maybe that's what you want, but i just wanted the creation kit to check out my script and compiled script when i started editing it.

So because of those reasons I gave up investigating the creation kit perforce integration. I hope the notes from my investigation help you though.
Now when editing a script, i just right-click and select 'open in external editor' which opens the script in Notepad++

Notepad++ has a plugin called 'nifty perforce' that will auto check-out your files when you start editing them. One caveat: make sure your p4 login username is the same as your windows user name

Thanks for that. Mainly though I wanted the esm merging facility. i tend to make lots of small esps to test ideas and then I want to merge the successful ones back into the main file. I didn't realise at the time that using TESVSnip for that purposes was akin to juggling chainsaws.

I think I'll stick with svn for the version control. I have a server already, so all I need to do is make sure the Skyrim folder is a working copy for the mod files.

And the depot layout sounds like a show stopper in any case.

Thanks for the reply.

No prob. Use the Source Control that you like the most. I use p4 because that's what I use at work, and so I'm most familiar with it.
If any programmers want help or advice using perforce, i'm your man!