The JIRA Perforce plugin allows JIRA to display Perforce change information on JIRA issues with associated Perforce jobs and change lists. Each JIRA issue that is referenced through a Perforce job or a JIRA issue key reference in a change list will display the details of that job and/or change list. The JIRA Perforce plugin is a client of the Perforce server - querying it for change list information and displaying that information through JIRA.
Change Lists
On startup, the JIRA Perforce plugin will connect with the Perforce server and query it for the change list logs. The change list commit log is indexed - these indexes are stored at <JIRA-INDEX-DIR>/plugins/atlassian-perforce-changes.
For each commit message that references a JIRA issue, JIRA will display the commit information in the P4 Changes tab in the View Issue screen for that issue.
The change index number, change commit date and time, change author and change description are displayed. The list of associated files changed is also displayed. The changes are sorted by change index number.
P4Web and P4DB
P4Web and P4DBare Perforce client web interfaces providing the ability to browse a Perforce depot workspace. By specifiying the URL of the P4Web or P4DB server in the perforce-jira-plugin.properties, the changed details will will be linked to the appropriate browser (P4Web and P4DB) view. It is only possible to specify ONE of these web interface types at a time.
Change List Indexing
The periodic indexing of change lists is achieved by a service, automatically installed in your JIRA instance by the plugin.
By default, this service checks Perforce for new change lists every 1 hour.
You can edit the period by editing the period of the Perforce Changed Indexing Service on the Administration > System > Services screen.
Jobs
The JIRA Perforce plugin provides the ability to create and delete a Perforce job through the JIRA interface.
The plugin will create or delete the Perforce job on the Perforce server as directed through a JIRA custom field:
- P4 Job Checbox - displays an editable checkbox on the create and edit issue views; allowing the user to specifiy if a job should be associated with the JIRA issue
- P4 Hidden Job Switch - this custom field can only be set programmatically through a workflow transition post-function; the ability to create or delete a P4 job is hidden from the user
These custom fields become available once the plugin has been installed and can be added to the system in the normal manner.
P4 Job CheckBox
The P4 Job Checkbox is used when the user is permitted to create or delete jobs for JIRA issues as required. Once added, the P4 Job Checkbox appears on the create and edit issue screens:
By selecting or deselecting the checkbox, the Perforce job will be created or deleted on the Perforce server.
Once created, the job details appear in the P4 Job tab on the view issue screen:
The job details also appear in the Issue Navigator:
and it is possible to search for issues with/without/with or without an associated Perforce job:
Hidden Job Switch
The P4 Hidden Job Switch custom field can be used when a Perforce job must be created for each issue and the user should not be able to delete the associated job through JIRA. This custom field has no create or edit views and can only be set programmatically through a workflow transition post function. All other job information is displayed as for the P4 Job Checkbox.