Promote shelved changelists

Changelists shelved on an Edge Server, which would normally be inaccessible from other Edge Servers, can be automatically or explicitly promoted to the Commit Server. Promoted shelved changelists are available to any Edge Server.

In a shared archive configuration, where the Commit Server and Edge Servers have access to the same storage device for the archive content, shelves are automatically promoted to the Commit Server. See Automatically promote shelves.
You must explicitly promote a shelf when the Commit and Edge Servers do not share the archive. See Explicitly promote shelves.

You can view a shelf’s promotion status using the -ztag output of the p4 describe, p4 changes, or p4 change -o commands.

For limitations, see Working with promoted shelves.

Automatically promote shelves

When the Edge Server and Commit Server are configured to access the same archive contents, shelf promotion occurs automatically, and promoting shelved files with p4 shelve -p is not required.

To configure the Edge Server and Commit Server to access the same archive contents, set server.depot.root to the same path for both the Commit and Edge Server, and set the lbr.replication configurable to shared for the Edge Server. For example:

p4 configure set commit#server.depot.root=/p4/depot/root 
p4 configure set edge#server.depot.root=/p4/depot/root
p4 configure set edge#lbr.replication=shared

Explicitly promote shelves

You can explicitly promotes shelves by setting a configurable or by using a command.

Configurable Command

Configurable	Command
Setting the `dm.shelve.promote` configurable to 1 makes Edge Servers automatically promote shelved files to the Commit Server. The file content is transferred and stored both on the Commit Server and the Edge Server. This does NOT transfer shelves created on the Commit Server to the Edge Servers automatically. If you are using Helix Swarm on an Edge Server, automatic promotion is necessary. See "Configure the Helix Server to promote all shelved changes" under Helix Core Server configuration for Swarm in the Helix Swarm Guide. Setting `dm.shelve.promote` can affect performance.	Using the `-p` option with the `p4 shelve` command explicitly promotes the specified changelist. For example, given two Edge Servers, `edge1` and `edge2`: On `edge1`, shelve and promote a changelist by running: p4 shelve -p -c 89 On `edge2`, the shelved changelist is now available by running: p4 describe -S 89

Setting the dm.shelve.promote configurable to 1 makes Edge Servers automatically promote shelved files to the Commit Server. The file content is transferred and stored both on the Commit Server and the Edge Server.

This does NOT transfer shelves created on the Commit Server to the Edge Servers automatically.

If you are using Helix Swarm on an Edge Server, automatic promotion is necessary. See "Configure the Helix Server to promote all shelved changes" under Helix Core Server configuration for Swarm in the Helix Swarm Guide.

Setting dm.shelve.promote can affect performance.

Using the -p option with the p4 shelve command explicitly promotes the specified changelist.

For example, given two Edge Servers, edge1 and edge2:

On edge1, shelve and promote a changelist by running:
```
p4 shelve -p -c 89
```
On edge2, the shelved changelist is now available by running:
```
p4 describe -S 89
```

Promotion is only required once

Subsequent p4 shelve commands automatically update the shelved changelist on the Commit Server and use server lock protection.

For example, on edge1, make changes and refresh the shelved changelist by running:

p4 shelve -r -c 89

The updates can now be seen on edge2 by running:

p4 describe -S 89

Promoting shelves when unloading clients

Use the -p option for the p4 unload command to promote any non-promoted shelves belonging to the specified client that is being unloaded. The shelf is promoted to the Commit Server where it can be accessed by other Edge Servers.

Working with promoted shelves

You can:

Delete the shelved files from the changelist, but you cannot unpromote a shelved changelist.
Unshelve a promoted shelf into open files and branches on a server other than the server where the shelf originated.
Run p4 submit -e on a promoted shelf only on the server that owns the change.
Move a promoted shelf from one Edge Server to another using the p4 unshelve command.