Shanghai Tech Writer

First of all, what is Perforce?

Perforce is a software configuration management system that NI uses to keep track of all the source files, edits, and revisions. In another words, it’s a library of files (kept on the servers) where different users can check in/out files and make changes. Perforce is important in a programming environment because when you have tens and hundreds of people accessing and making changes to the same files, there needs to be a system to keep track of all these changes. Without Perforce, people can make changes too except nobody will know who made what changes when and why. If a chunk of codes were accidentally deleted, there’d be no way of ever recovering that. Every change is permanent and irreversible. With Perforce, every minute change is recorded in the revision history with date/user-id stamp.

At NI, or at least in the technical communications group, we use Perforce to manage every document we write. I spent one afternoon last week installing, configuring, and learning how to use Perforce. I wasn’t given any written instructions on how to configure Perforce (setting up the servers and clients), so it took a while to figure out with the aid of another technical writer who came onboard just a month before me.

I’m still trying to get the hang of Perforce. I understand the basics but there are many steps to each usage that I’m still trying to commit to memory and practice. In another post, I’ll share about my first BLOOPER at work. If it wasn’t for the lead technical writer to the rescue, Austin headquarters would have had my head chopped off the next morning. It’s a good thing there’s the 13 hours time difference and we’re ahead of them.

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