Can you “ignore” a file in Perforce?

As of version 2012.1, Perforce supports the P4IGNORE environment variable. I updated my answer to this question about ignoring directories with an explanation of how it works. Then I noticed this answer, which is now superfluous I guess.


Assuming you have a client named “CLIENT”, a directory named “foo” (located at your project root), and you wish to ignore all .dll files in that directory tree, you can add the following lines to your workspace view to accomplish this:

-//depot/foo/*.dll //CLIENT/foo/*.dll
-//depot/foo/.../*.dll //CLIENT/foo/.../*.dll

The first line removes them from the directory “foo” and the second line removes them from all sub directories. Now, when you ‘Reconcile Offline Work…’, all the .dll files will be moved into “Excluded Files” folders at the bottom of the folder diff display. They will be out of your way, but can still view and manipulate them if you really need to.

You can also do it another way, which will reduce your “Excluded Files” folder to just one, but you won’t be able to manipulate any of the files it contains because the path will be corrupt (but if you just want them out of your way, it doesn’t matter).

-//depot/foo.../*.dll //CLIENT/foo.../*.dll

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