P4PORT meaning before and after a clone

When you clone from a shared server to create a personal server, the P4PORT argument you pass to the p4 clone command specifies the address of the shared server you wish to clone from. If you don’t pass a P4PORT value via the -p option, P4 Server uses the value of P4PORT set in the current command environment to identify the address of the shared server you wish to clone from.

After a clone, P4PORT refers to the personal server’s P4PORT setting in its P4CONFIG file.

Directories and files

The p4 clone command creates all the directories and files that the p4 init command creates. In addition, p4 clone creates a remote called origin on the personal server. A remote is a mapping of files on a personal server to files on a shared server and is required for fetching, pushing, and cloning; it describes exactly which files should be copied from a personal server to a shared server or vice-versa. It is described in detail in Understanding Remotes.