Selectively update Workspace

[ironbelly]

In perforce this was very simple, we could browse the depot structure on the server and pick and choose which files/folders we wanted to pull down/update.  I cannot stress how crucial this is on a large 30 GB+ project being worked on by dozens of people all around the world.  

We just switched one such project over from Perforce to plastic and to my horror I cannot figure out how to accomplish this and am quite concerned that it isn't possible.  The problem is this, we have people in countries like Colombia with slow and sometimes unreliable internet.  They are working on 200-300 MB of content on this 30GB project, they only ever need to update or commit from that 200-300MB part of the project and it is literally impossible for them to pull the entire project down in it's entirety because there is absolutely no way that their connection will remain 100% stable for the 35+ hours that it will take to pull it down.  Due to the fact that Plastic down not support the resuming of updates or commits any interruption will result in the process being restarted again.

We could make them their own branch in theory and then someone closer to the server with a better connection could handle the merge but it would sure be nice if they could simply choose which folder they updated.  It's such a common sense feature of perforce that I just assumed it would be in plastic so I am assuming it is possible but I don't know the method of doing it and would appreciate any help here.. thanks 

[manu]

Hello @ironbelly,

you have two ways to avoid downloading certain parts of your repo.

1. Gluon

Widely used by game studios. Allows you to work on the main branch using the exclusive checkout in order to avoid the merge operation. Creating branches or Merging is not allowed (heavily oriented for game development and binary management).

Here you can check the details: https://www.plasticscm.com/documentation/gluon/plastic-scm-version-control-gluon-guide.shtml#Configuringtheworkspace

2. cloaked.conf

You can use the clocked.conf feature with the regular Plastic SCM GUI (plastic.exe, gtkplasptic, macplastic and cm). Allows you to write a set of rules in order to prevent to download certain parts of the repository. It's compatible with the merge operation and you can switch your workspace to a different branch.

https://www.plasticscm.com/documentation/gui/plastic-scm-version-control-gui-guide.shtml#CommandsforSource-ControlledItems