{"slug": "perforce", "name": "Perforce", "category": "git", "category_name": "Git and code hosting", "description": "Centralized version control system (Helix Core / P4) for large codebases and binary assets.", "recommenders": 7, "commenters": 16, "warners": 0, "score": 8.984, "rising": 4.35, "first": "2026-03-10", "latest": "2026-10-14", "why": "HN commenters like Perforce for handling large binaries and huge monorepos, especially at game studios, and for tools like Timelapse View and p4merge.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 7, "compare": 2, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 3], "listed": true, "loved": ["Large binaries", "Scales to monorepos"], "caveat": "Expensive", "short_quote": "At Team Bondi we used Perforce, and I loved its Timelapse View", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.perforce.com", "pricing": "paid", "aliases": ["Perforce"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Perforce for handling large binaries and huge monorepos, especially at game studios,", "cites": [{"id": 794438753, "item_id": 49652422, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652422", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4.", "excerpt": "> Git and P4 are not meant to be directly competitive here. True, but for the problems that Git LFS solves P4 is usually the other option. P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4. In some projects the caveats are worth it. I work in video games and our in house engine has an unfiltered checkout size over a 1TB. I've found LFS very brittle when bouncing between branches and moving around in hi", "context": "works in video games with a 1TB repo", "use_case": "large binary version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 801268416, "item_id": 50079276, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50079276", "by": "jeffbee", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I feel like \"didn't scale well\" is unfair to Perforce.", "excerpt": "I feel like \"didn't scale well\" is unfair to Perforce. It scaled to accommodate an absurd monorepo that might have been, at the moment they switched to Piper, the largest single software project in history. It scaled to handle the needs of every organization in the industry except Google and Microsoft.", "context": "", "use_case": "large monorepo version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}, {"id": 783460720, "item_id": 48966295, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966295", "by": "ChrisMarshallNY", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job.", "excerpt": "If you are using Perforce as an enterprise system, $500 is peanuts. Perforce can get pricey. We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job. However, I continue to be amazed that Perforce survived Git. I assume its ability to handle large binaries has been what saved it. I seem to remember an HN posting, some time ago, about a new system, aimed at creatives, and that handles big binaries. It looked fairly good, but no", "context": "", "use_case": "version control for large binaries", "switched_from": "", "story": "Perforce charges $500 for training training videos.. and it's AI narrated"}, {"id": 794232609, "item_id": 49639538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49639538", "by": "bob1029", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I had a real studio I'd buy some perforce seats.", "excerpt": "It sounds like the author went through a lot of pain to avoid using git+lfs or perforce. I use git+lfs for unity projects and it works out great. If I had a real studio I'd buy some perforce seats. Reinventing the wheel like this is quite exhausting. There are options that are proven to work. AI authorship does not fundamentally violate the idea of some thing owning a specific commit. We don't need new schemas in our", "context": "", "use_case": "studio version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}]}, {"text": " and for tools like Timelapse View and p4merge.", "cites": [{"id": 798732066, "item_id": 49920754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920754", "by": "kranzky", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "At Team Bondi we used Perforce, and I loved its Timelapse View", "excerpt": "Hi HN, I'm Kranzky (aka Jason Hutchens). I've been writing code for over 30 years, a good chunk of it in games, including the scripting system for Black & White at Lionhead, AI on L.A. Noire at Team Bondi, a Futebol MMO that never saw the light of day... At Team Bondi we used Perforce, and I loved its Timelapse View, which I've missed badly since moving to Git many moons ago. So I finally built it, inspired by the Ha", "context": "game developer with 30+ years of coding", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Git Lineage, a Perforce-style time-lapse view for Git blame"}, {"id": 801231936, "item_id": 50076996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076996", "by": "pyrolistical", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui", "excerpt": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui and didn\u2019t allow me to code on the beach. If I were still manually merging conflicts the p4merge tool was GOAT I used it in git", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaints are its price", "cites": [{"id": 794244113, "item_id": 49640257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640257", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS", "excerpt": "From my experience Git LFS is extremely brittle and will break your local check out if you so much as breath on it wrong. Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS, and I've yet to find a workflow as powerful as my git workflows for managing code. I don't really see what the article is talking about as the future, but if P4 or Git LFS is the best we can do as a species then we're doomed. All VCS option", "context": "", "use_case": "versioning large files", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 783460720, "item_id": 48966295, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966295", "by": "ChrisMarshallNY", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job.", "excerpt": "If you are using Perforce as an enterprise system, $500 is peanuts. Perforce can get pricey. We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job. However, I continue to be amazed that Perforce survived Git. I assume its ability to handle large binaries has been what saved it. I seem to remember an HN posting, some time ago, about a new system, aimed at creatives, and that handles big binaries. It looked fairly good, but no", "context": "", "use_case": "version control for large binaries", "switched_from": "", "story": "Perforce charges $500 for training training videos.. and it's AI narrated"}]}, {"text": " and a clunky UI and code workflow compared with Git.", "cites": [{"id": 801231936, "item_id": 50076996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076996", "by": "pyrolistical", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui", "excerpt": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui and didn\u2019t allow me to code on the beach. If I were still manually merging conflicts the p4merge tool was GOAT I used it in git", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}, {"id": 794244113, "item_id": 49640257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640257", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS", "excerpt": "From my experience Git LFS is extremely brittle and will break your local check out if you so much as breath on it wrong. Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS, and I've yet to find a workflow as powerful as my git workflows for managing code. I don't really see what the article is talking about as the future, but if P4 or Git LFS is the best we can do as a species then we're doomed. All VCS option", "context": "", "use_case": "versioning large files", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 794438753, "item_id": 49652422, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652422", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4.", "excerpt": "> Git and P4 are not meant to be directly competitive here. True, but for the problems that Git LFS solves P4 is usually the other option. P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4. In some projects the caveats are worth it. I work in video games and our in house engine has an unfiltered checkout size over a 1TB. I've found LFS very brittle when bouncing between branches and moving around in hi", "context": "works in video games with a 1TB repo", "use_case": "large binary version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Large binaries", "summary": "Handles very large binary assets well, which commenters credit for its survival alongside Git.", "quotes": [{"id": 794438753, "item_id": 49652422, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652422", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4.", "excerpt": "> Git and P4 are not meant to be directly competitive here. True, but for the problems that Git LFS solves P4 is usually the other option. P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4. In some projects the caveats are worth it. I work in video games and our in house engine has an unfiltered checkout size over a 1TB. I've found LFS very brittle when bouncing between branches and moving around in hi", "context": "works in video games with a 1TB repo", "use_case": "large binary version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 783460720, "item_id": 48966295, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966295", "by": "ChrisMarshallNY", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job.", "excerpt": "If you are using Perforce as an enterprise system, $500 is peanuts. Perforce can get pricey. We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job. However, I continue to be amazed that Perforce survived Git. I assume its ability to handle large binaries has been what saved it. I seem to remember an HN posting, some time ago, about a new system, aimed at creatives, and that handles big binaries. It looked fairly good, but no", "context": "", "use_case": "version control for large binaries", "switched_from": "", "story": "Perforce charges $500 for training training videos.. and it's AI narrated"}, {"id": 794232609, "item_id": 49639538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49639538", "by": "bob1029", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I had a real studio I'd buy some perforce seats.", "excerpt": "It sounds like the author went through a lot of pain to avoid using git+lfs or perforce. I use git+lfs for unity projects and it works out great. If I had a real studio I'd buy some perforce seats. Reinventing the wheel like this is quite exhausting. There are options that are proven to work. AI authorship does not fundamentally violate the idea of some thing owning a specific commit. We don't need new schemas in our", "context": "", "use_case": "studio version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}]}, {"label": "Scales to monorepos", "summary": "Scaled to enormous monorepos and the needs of most of the industry.", "quotes": [{"id": 801268416, "item_id": 50079276, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50079276", "by": "jeffbee", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I feel like \"didn't scale well\" is unfair to Perforce.", "excerpt": "I feel like \"didn't scale well\" is unfair to Perforce. It scaled to accommodate an absurd monorepo that might have been, at the moment they switched to Piper, the largest single software project in history. It scaled to handle the needs of every organization in the industry except Google and Microsoft.", "context": "", "use_case": "large monorepo version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}]}, {"label": "Bundled tools", "summary": "Commenters still miss tools like Timelapse View and the p4merge diff tool.", "quotes": [{"id": 798732066, "item_id": 49920754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920754", "by": "kranzky", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "At Team Bondi we used Perforce, and I loved its Timelapse View", "excerpt": "Hi HN, I'm Kranzky (aka Jason Hutchens). I've been writing code for over 30 years, a good chunk of it in games, including the scripting system for Black & White at Lionhead, AI on L.A. Noire at Team Bondi, a Futebol MMO that never saw the light of day... At Team Bondi we used Perforce, and I loved its Timelapse View, which I've missed badly since moving to Git many moons ago. So I finally built it, inspired by the Ha", "context": "game developer with 30+ years of coding", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Git Lineage, a Perforce-style time-lapse view for Git blame"}, {"id": 801231936, "item_id": 50076996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076996", "by": "pyrolistical", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui", "excerpt": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui and didn\u2019t allow me to code on the beach. If I were still manually merging conflicts the p4merge tool was GOAT I used it in git", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}, {"id": 757252481, "item_id": 47328280, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328280", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-03-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce and Fuel are the two i like the most", "excerpt": "> Magit is absolutely the best Git GUI ever. But it isn't graphical :-P. Personally i've been often looking for an opensource Git GUI front end but couldn't find anything i'd like. My points of reference of decent tools -ignoring the underlying tech- are Perforce and TortoiseSVN under Windows and Fuel[0] (for Fossil) and KDESVN under Linux. Perforce and Fuel are the two i like the most, followed by KDESVN and Tortois", "context": "Linux user, open source only", "use_case": "version control GUI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rebasing in Magit"}]}, {"label": "Low-maintenance setup", "summary": "Easy to pick up and preferred when someone else manages it or it is set-and-forget.", "quotes": [{"id": 777324609, "item_id": 48582788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582788", "by": "59nadir", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I prefer something like Perforce if someone can manage it for me", "excerpt": "Honestly, when our backend team merged into one that was using Perforce for the backend learning how to use Perforce wasn't realistically even a blip on the radar of what to get used to. I was against it at the time for what we were doing but with the benefit of hindsight I can say that I prefer something like Perforce if someone can manage it for me, or it's a set-and-forget type situation; I don't personally have a", "context": "backend team lead", "use_case": "version control for binaries", "switched_from": "", "story": "Epic Games announces Lore version control system"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Expensive", "summary": "Commenters call it an expensive solution that can get pricey.", "quotes": [{"id": 794244113, "item_id": 49640257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640257", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS", "excerpt": "From my experience Git LFS is extremely brittle and will break your local check out if you so much as breath on it wrong. Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS, and I've yet to find a workflow as powerful as my git workflows for managing code. I don't really see what the article is talking about as the future, but if P4 or Git LFS is the best we can do as a species then we're doomed. All VCS option", "context": "", "use_case": "versioning large files", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 783460720, "item_id": 48966295, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966295", "by": "ChrisMarshallNY", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job.", "excerpt": "If you are using Perforce as an enterprise system, $500 is peanuts. Perforce can get pricey. We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job. However, I continue to be amazed that Perforce survived Git. I assume its ability to handle large binaries has been what saved it. I seem to remember an HN posting, some time ago, about a new system, aimed at creatives, and that handles big binaries. It looked fairly good, but no", "context": "", "use_case": "version control for large binaries", "switched_from": "", "story": "Perforce charges $500 for training training videos.. and it's AI narrated"}]}, {"label": "UI and workflow", "summary": "The UI is called terrible and code workflows weaker than Git's.", "quotes": [{"id": 801231936, "item_id": 50076996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076996", "by": "pyrolistical", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui", "excerpt": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui and didn\u2019t allow me to code on the beach. If I were still manually merging conflicts the p4merge tool was GOAT I used it in git", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}, {"id": 794244113, "item_id": 49640257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640257", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS", "excerpt": "From my experience Git LFS is extremely brittle and will break your local check out if you so much as breath on it wrong. Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS, and I've yet to find a workflow as powerful as my git workflows for managing code. I don't really see what the article is talking about as the future, but if P4 or Git LFS is the best we can do as a species then we're doomed. All VCS option", "context": "", "use_case": "versioning large files", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 794438753, "item_id": 49652422, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652422", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4.", "excerpt": "> Git and P4 are not meant to be directly competitive here. True, but for the problems that Git LFS solves P4 is usually the other option. P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4. In some projects the caveats are worth it. I work in video games and our in house engine has an unfiltered checkout size over a 1TB. I've found LFS very brittle when bouncing between branches and moving around in hi", "context": "works in video games with a 1TB repo", "use_case": "large binary version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}]}, {"label": "Slow large syncs", "summary": "Big checkouts can take over an hour and reconcile is slow, so users often force-sync instead.", "quotes": [{"id": 760908720, "item_id": 47556795, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47556795", "by": "MaulingMonkey", "date": "2026-03-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "my bread and butter monorepos are Perforce based", "excerpt": "> no commit history, 10k+ lines of complicated code This kind of pattern is incredibly common when e.g. a sublibrary of a closed source project is extracted from a monorepository. Search for \"_LICENSE\" in the source code and you'll see leftover signs that this was indeed at one point limited to \"single-process-package hardware\" for rent extraction purpouses. Now, for me, my bread and butter monorepos are Perforce bas", "context": "gamedev", "use_case": "game dev monorepos", "switched_from": "", "story": "A single-file C allocator with explicit heaps and tuning knobs"}, {"id": 777310384, "item_id": 48581899, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581899", "by": "bananaboy", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been using p4 daily for about 21 years at various game studios", "excerpt": "I've been using p4 daily for about 21 years at various game studios (with a small break of around 5 years in the middle, where I used it only sporadically) and I think I can count the number of times I've used \"reconcile offline work\" on one hand. I think the only time my workspace has gotten into some kind of corrupted state was because of a crash that left it half-synced. If that ever happens I usually just blow it", "context": "game studio developer", "use_case": "version control at game studios", "switched_from": "", "story": "Epic Games announces Lore version control system"}]}, {"label": "Centralized model", "summary": "Not built for open collaboration and harder to work away from the server.", "quotes": [{"id": 767232417, "item_id": 47952026, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952026", "by": "sjia", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Great for controlled environments, but not really built for open collaboration or community growth", "excerpt": "I used ClearCase and Perforce too. Great for controlled environments, but not really built for open collaboration or community growth", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Before GitHub"}, {"id": 801231936, "item_id": 50076996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076996", "by": "pyrolistical", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui", "excerpt": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui and didn\u2019t allow me to code on the beach. If I were still manually merging conflicts the p4merge tool was GOAT I used it in git", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}]}, {"label": "Closed source", "summary": "Ruled out by users who stick to open-source tools.", "quotes": [{"id": 757252481, "item_id": 47328280, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328280", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-03-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce and Fuel are the two i like the most", "excerpt": "> Magit is absolutely the best Git GUI ever. But it isn't graphical :-P. Personally i've been often looking for an opensource Git GUI front end but couldn't find anything i'd like. My points of reference of decent tools -ignoring the underlying tech- are Perforce and TortoiseSVN under Windows and Fuel[0] (for Fossil) and KDESVN under Linux. Perforce and Fuel are the two i like the most, followed by KDESVN and Tortois", "context": "Linux user, open source only", "use_case": "version control GUI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rebasing in Magit"}]}, {"label": "Asset pipelines", "summary": "One commenter found Alienbrain better integrated for huge binary asset pipelines.", "quotes": [{"id": 783478161, "item_id": 48967385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967385", "by": "invader", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "compare", "quote": "something a stock git or Perforce would never achieve", "excerpt": "> Virtually 100% of non-indie devs use Perforce. Not really. There are better products out there. When I worked at Triple-A studio, we used Alienbrain, which is specifically tailored for huge binary versioning with previews and stuff. We had terabytes of assets, and Alienbrain handled it well, including seamless integration into pipelines - something a stock git or Perforce would never achieve.", "context": "worked at a Triple-A studio", "use_case": "game asset version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Perforce charges $500 for training training videos.. and it's AI narrated"}]}], "who": [{"by": "kranzky", "context": "game developer with 30+ years of coding", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920754", "date": "2026-10-01"}, {"by": "MindSpunk", "context": "works in video games with a 1TB repo", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652422", "date": "2026-09-11"}, {"by": "maccard", "context": "works in games", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124086", "date": "2026-07-31"}, {"by": "dijit", "context": "gamedev studio", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48744775", "date": "2026-07-01"}, {"by": "59nadir", "context": "backend team lead", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582788", "date": "2026-06-18"}, {"by": "bananaboy", "context": "game studio developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581899", "date": "2026-06-18"}, {"by": "MaulingMonkey", "context": "gamedev", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47556795", "date": "2026-03-28"}, {"by": "badsectoracula", "context": "Linux user, open source only", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328280", "date": "2026-03-10"}], "tags": ["for game studios", "for large binary assets", "for monorepos", "for centrally managed teams"], "use_cases": ["version control", "source control", "large monorepo version control", "large binary version control", "versioning large files", "studio version control"], "compared": [{"slug": "git", "name": "Git", "co": 12, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "git-lfs", "name": "Git LFS", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50073633", "title": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49603265", "title": "Version control second coming", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965886", "title": "Perforce charges $500 for training training videos.. and it's AI narrated", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48571081", "title": "Epic Games announces Lore version control system", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920748", "title": "Show HN: Git Lineage, a Perforce-style time-lapse view for Git blame", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49120097", "title": "Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 4, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 3, "compare": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 801319825, "item_id": 50082489, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082489", "by": "ulrikrasmussen", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I have worked with both git and Perforce and see the appeal of both.", "excerpt": "I think you also expand on that later, but that paragraph just gave me pause because it essentially says that if you hold it as wrong as possible, then bad things will happen. It's a bit like presenting an alternative to relational databases by pointing out that schemas with no indexes lead to hour long queries. I'm not interested in the hypothetical worst-case of the old system, I am interested in your average traff", "context": "", "use_case": "source control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}, {"id": 801268416, "item_id": 50079276, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50079276", "by": "jeffbee", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I feel like \"didn't scale well\" is unfair to Perforce.", "excerpt": "I feel like \"didn't scale well\" is unfair to Perforce. It scaled to accommodate an absurd monorepo that might have been, at the moment they switched to Piper, the largest single software project in history. It scaled to handle the needs of every organization in the industry except Google and Microsoft.", "context": "", "use_case": "large monorepo version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}, {"id": 801231936, "item_id": 50076996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076996", "by": "pyrolistical", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui", "excerpt": "Perforce was fine. It just had a terrible ui and didn\u2019t allow me to code on the beach. If I were still manually merging conflicts the p4merge tool was GOAT I used it in git", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Redesigning source control at Anthropic"}, {"id": 798732066, "item_id": 49920754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920754", "by": "kranzky", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "At Team Bondi we used Perforce, and I loved its Timelapse View", "excerpt": "Hi HN, I'm Kranzky (aka Jason Hutchens). I've been writing code for over 30 years, a good chunk of it in games, including the scripting system for Black & White at Lionhead, AI on L.A. Noire at Team Bondi, a Futebol MMO that never saw the light of day... At Team Bondi we used Perforce, and I loved its Timelapse View, which I've missed badly since moving to Git many moons ago. So I finally built it, inspired by the Ha", "context": "game developer with 30+ years of coding", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Git Lineage, a Perforce-style time-lapse view for Git blame"}, {"id": 794438753, "item_id": 49652422, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652422", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4.", "excerpt": "> Git and P4 are not meant to be directly competitive here. True, but for the problems that Git LFS solves P4 is usually the other option. P4 handles large binaries very well, caveat being the rest of P4. In some projects the caveats are worth it. I work in video games and our in house engine has an unfiltered checkout size over a 1TB. I've found LFS very brittle when bouncing between branches and moving around in hi", "context": "works in video games with a 1TB repo", "use_case": "large binary version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 794244113, "item_id": 49640257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640257", "by": "MindSpunk", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS", "excerpt": "From my experience Git LFS is extremely brittle and will break your local check out if you so much as breath on it wrong. Perforce is an expensive solution to the problems of LFS, and I've yet to find a workflow as powerful as my git workflows for managing code. I don't really see what the article is talking about as the future, but if P4 or Git LFS is the best we can do as a species then we're doomed. All VCS option", "context": "", "use_case": "versioning large files", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 794232609, "item_id": 49639538, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49639538", "by": "bob1029", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I had a real studio I'd buy some perforce seats.", "excerpt": "It sounds like the author went through a lot of pain to avoid using git+lfs or perforce. I use git+lfs for unity projects and it works out great. If I had a real studio I'd buy some perforce seats. Reinventing the wheel like this is quite exhausting. There are options that are proven to work. AI authorship does not fundamentally violate the idea of some thing owning a specific commit. We don't need new schemas in our", "context": "", "use_case": "studio version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 785985376, "item_id": 49124086, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124086", "by": "maccard", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we use perforce in games", "excerpt": "It\u2019s clear at this point that agents don\u2019t actually follow agents.md They try to but they don\u2019t. As an example, we use perforce in games. I regularly have to stop an agent and remind it to use p4 edit rather than blasting through the read only flag, despite the first paragraph of Claude.md being \u201cthis is a project using perforce. Batch call p4 edit on all files before modifying, do not manually remove the read only f", "context": "works in games", "use_case": "version control for games", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI"}, {"id": 783478161, "item_id": 48967385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967385", "by": "invader", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "compare", "quote": "something a stock git or Perforce would never achieve", "excerpt": "> Virtually 100% of non-indie devs use Perforce. Not really. There are better products out there. When I worked at Triple-A studio, we used Alienbrain, which is specifically tailored for huge binary versioning with previews and stuff. We had terabytes of assets, and Alienbrain handled it well, including seamless integration into pipelines - something a stock git or Perforce would never achieve.", "context": "worked at a Triple-A studio", "use_case": "game asset version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Perforce charges $500 for training training videos.. and it's AI narrated"}, {"id": 783460720, "item_id": 48966295, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966295", "by": "ChrisMarshallNY", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job.", "excerpt": "If you are using Perforce as an enterprise system, $500 is peanuts. Perforce can get pricey. We used to be a Perforce shop, in my last job. However, I continue to be amazed that Perforce survived Git. I assume its ability to handle large binaries has been what saved it. I seem to remember an HN posting, some time ago, about a new system, aimed at creatives, and that handles big binaries. It looked fairly good, but no", "context": "", "use_case": "version control for large binaries", "switched_from": "", "story": "Perforce charges $500 for training training videos.. and it's AI narrated"}, {"id": 780341920, "item_id": 48771370, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48771370", "by": "gambiting", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We use perforce and Claude can't push anything to our perforce server.", "excerpt": "We use perforce and Claude can't push anything to our perforce server. The worst thing it could possibly do is delete my local workspace, but that's not exactly a huge problem, would just have to sync again.", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Short Leash AI Coding Method for Beating Fable"}, {"id": 779916401, "item_id": 48744775, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48744775", "by": "dijit", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "patches I made to provide Perforce support which I use at my gamedev studio", "excerpt": "Ha! This post comes right at the time where I finally got around to open sourcing the patches I made to provide Perforce support which I use at my gamedev studio[0]. I find it kind of funny that perforce support was not included, only git support seems to exist in any meaningful way: despite the primary use of copybara being for releasing internal google code (which lives in Piper, a fork of Perforce). I actually got", "context": "gamedev studio", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google copybara: moving code between repositories"}, {"id": 777324609, "item_id": 48582788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582788", "by": "59nadir", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I prefer something like Perforce if someone can manage it for me", "excerpt": "Honestly, when our backend team merged into one that was using Perforce for the backend learning how to use Perforce wasn't realistically even a blip on the radar of what to get used to. I was against it at the time for what we were doing but with the benefit of hindsight I can say that I prefer something like Perforce if someone can manage it for me, or it's a set-and-forget type situation; I don't personally have a", "context": "backend team lead", "use_case": "version control for binaries", "switched_from": "", "story": "Epic Games announces Lore version control system"}, {"id": 777310384, "item_id": 48581899, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581899", "by": "bananaboy", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been using p4 daily for about 21 years at various game studios", "excerpt": "I've been using p4 daily for about 21 years at various game studios (with a small break of around 5 years in the middle, where I used it only sporadically) and I think I can count the number of times I've used \"reconcile offline work\" on one hand. I think the only time my workspace has gotten into some kind of corrupted state was because of a crash that left it half-synced. If that ever happens I usually just blow it", "context": "game studio developer", "use_case": "version control at game studios", "switched_from": "", "story": "Epic Games announces Lore version control system"}, {"id": 767232417, "item_id": 47952026, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952026", "by": "sjia", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Great for controlled environments, but not really built for open collaboration or community growth", "excerpt": "I used ClearCase and Perforce too. Great for controlled environments, but not really built for open collaboration or community growth", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Before GitHub"}, {"id": 760908720, "item_id": 47556795, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47556795", "by": "MaulingMonkey", "date": "2026-03-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "my bread and butter monorepos are Perforce based", "excerpt": "> no commit history, 10k+ lines of complicated code This kind of pattern is incredibly common when e.g. a sublibrary of a closed source project is extracted from a monorepository. Search for \"_LICENSE\" in the source code and you'll see leftover signs that this was indeed at one point limited to \"single-process-package hardware\" for rent extraction purpouses. Now, for me, my bread and butter monorepos are Perforce bas", "context": "gamedev", "use_case": "game dev monorepos", "switched_from": "", "story": "A single-file C allocator with explicit heaps and tuning knobs"}, {"id": 757252481, "item_id": 47328280, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328280", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-03-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Perforce and Fuel are the two i like the most", "excerpt": "> Magit is absolutely the best Git GUI ever. But it isn't graphical :-P. Personally i've been often looking for an opensource Git GUI front end but couldn't find anything i'd like. My points of reference of decent tools -ignoring the underlying tech- are Perforce and TortoiseSVN under Windows and Fuel[0] (for Fossil) and KDESVN under Linux. Perforce and Fuel are the two i like the most, followed by KDESVN and Tortois", "context": "Linux user, open source only", "use_case": "version control GUI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rebasing in Magit"}]}