DVCS installation of P4 Server

Prerequisites between servers

• Unicode mode must be aligned. However, starting with 2025.2, a unicode server can fetch from a non-unicode server. To learn more, see the RemoteCharset form field of the p4 remote command in the P4 CLI Reference.

• Case sensitivity must be aligned.

• Push and fetch between DVCS servers works best when the servers are at the same version. Recent server versions that differ by a year or less might also work.

Be aware that DVCS doesn’t handle stream specs and doesn’t import stream spec history.

Linux without OS-specific packages

1. Open a web browser.
2. Navigate to http://www.perforce.com/downloads.
3. Download the helix-versioning-engine-{x86,64}.{tgz,zip} file.
4. Extract the P4 Server (p4d) and P4 Server Command Line (p4) from the tgz/zip file.
5. Open a Terminal window.

6. Make the downloaded files executable:

   chmod +x Downloads/p4*

7. Move the files into a common execution path:

   sudo mv Downloads/p4* /usr/local/bin/

Linux with OS-specific packages

1. Open a web browser.
2. Navigate to http://package.perforce.com
3. Follow the instructions to configure a package repository and install OS-specific packages.

Windows

A user with administrator privileges can install the server.

1. Open a web browser.
2. Navigate to http://www.perforce.com/downloads.
3. Download the P4 Server Command Line installer.
4. Run the installer you downloaded.
5. Accept all of the defaults.

This gives you the p4d executable (P4 Server) and the p4 executable (P4 Server Command Line).

macOS

1. Open a web browser.
2. Navigate to http://www.perforce.com/downloads.
3. Download the helix-versioning-engine-{x86,64}.{tgz,zip} file.
4. Extract the P4 Server (p4d) and P4 Server Command Line (p4) from the tgz/zip file.
5. Open a Terminal window.

6. Make the downloaded files executable:

   chmod +x Downloads/p4*

7. Move the files into a common execution path:

   sudo mv Downloads/p4* /usr/local/bin/