2

Quick question as likely I will have more later.

I'm currently investigating document management solutions and was wondering if anyone has been able to set up full-text searching of a Perforce depot? Specifically for Microsoft Office documents (word, excel) however I can see how this would be useful for general text files.

I remember reading something about full-text searching a while ago (on the P4 KB or mailing list) however couldn't find it after a few searches.

If it not possible, a few suggestions on how a solution could be achieved would be helpful, e.g. using Windows Search Services (Sharepoint).

Dennis
  • 20,275
  • 4
  • 64
  • 80

2 Answers2

2

I am not sure about excel / word format but when dealing with text / code files, P4 grep command may be useful for you. Please give it a try:

P4 Grep blog and P4 Grep Manual

Hope you get a lead from there.

Raghuveer
  • 1,413
  • 3
  • 23
  • 39
  • Thanks for you input. `p4 grep` could be useful if it could be extended to index office documents. Ideally at the end of the day want something that is accessible to everyone, i.e. not just programmers. – Dennis Sep 18 '12 at 19:43
  • Yeah true ! Please share the solution with us. It will be helpful for everyone. – Raghuveer Sep 19 '12 at 19:40
  • absolutely will share the my research/solution once I come up with one. – Dennis Sep 19 '12 at 20:30
2

One way to do this is to (a) create a client that maps the interesting contents of the depot, (b) set up automation to sync that client regularly (e.g., once a second) so that it's always up-to-date, (c) set up software like dig, Copernicus, the Google Desktop Search Engine, or Lucene to index the contents of the materials sync'd by the client, and (d) set up a web server of some sort which serves up the results of the indexing engine to searchers.

It requires stitching together several components, but I built a system like this about 10 years ago over a weekend and it held together just fine for 7+ years until I moved on from that organization.

Bryan Pendleton
  • 16,128
  • 3
  • 32
  • 56
  • This sounds good; I will investigate further. Most likely will use Microsoft Search Server as the indexer as that providers a web-based portal and is **also** accessible via Windows Explorer which is a huge win. (http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/en/us/search-server-express.aspx). – Dennis Sep 19 '12 at 20:34