Working with Perforce Validate

Validate by Perforce is a web interface for project management, reporting, issue management and user management. Full details of its capabilities can be found in the online manual here (external link).

Not all Validate capabilities are fully supported in Perforce QAC.

For Perforce QAC users, there are two primary use cases:

Diagnostic Viewer

Diagnostics are uploaded to the Validate server and can be viewed and queried by anyone with the appropriate permissions. Suppressions can be addressed on the Validate server.

Connected Projects

The term connected project refers to a Perforce QAC project that is connected to a Validate project. The Perforce QAC configuration, including the Rule Configuration File (RCF), Analysis Configuration File (ACF), Compiler Capability Template (CCT) are stored on the Validate server and any user with the appropriate permissions can re-create the project on their desktop. Synchronization of the RCF, which can be edited locally (or on Validate), is automatically synchronized before local analysis begins.

For existing Perforce QAC Dashboard users, a connected project is like a unified project.

Typical Integrated Workflow

The following example represents a typical workflow for working with Validate:

  1. Create and configure a Perforce QAC project with a single configuration, add all relevant source files, and verify that analysis results are as expected.
  2. Create a new project on the Validate server. You can do this either from the Perforce QAC GUI (Portals -> Validate -> Connect Project) or using the command line (qacli validate project --create), without needing the web interface.
  3. Connect the Perforce QAC project to the Validate project — via the GUI (Portals -> Validate -> Connect Project, which also auto-uploads the configuration) or the command line (qacli validate connect --set <project> --url <server>, which pushes the configuration automatically unless --no-push-config is supplied).
  4. Upload analysis results to Validate using Portals -> Validate -> Upload Results in the GUI, or qacli validate build on the command line.
Users with appropriate permissions can recreate the project locally using Portals -> Validate -> Create Project from Validate or with the qacli validate config --create command.