git-perforce interface

The best thing I found out and learned today was the git interface for perforce repositories. There are many things about perforce that made me cringe.
1) No support for local commits. Limited support is provided by distinct changelists, but it only works if a non-intersecting set of files are being modified in both commits. It is rarely the case. This usually means you cannot commit small logical chunks of code and sometimes have to submit hugeeeee code-changes (which is not recommended)
2) No rollbacks or editing commits.
3) Limited branching support (Like I don't have permission to branch on the repository. But, with git I can have infinite local branches)
4) Send out patches that others can apply. (Perforce patches cannot be applied)
5) Manually check-out each file I am going to edit. This is a major pain.

So, I set out looking for some kind of git-perforce inter-conversion software and found that git itself provides the required scripts. My internet is screwed, so I cannot provide a full link as of now. but, you'd find the git's git repository at git-scm.com. Goto contrib/fast-import. Under that where you'll find both the documentation and the script. Unfortunately, fedora decided not to package it.

With that in place, I was able to use my perforce repository as a git repository. Commit local changes. Edit commits. Send out patches for each commit separately and all the cool stuff git has to offer. (Note that perforce repository can be seen as remote branch p4/master) git-p4 assigns a changelist id to each commit, thus mapping perforce commits to git commits. At last, just call "git-p4 rebase" (to accept latest changes) and then "git-p4 submit" to submit all changes to the perforce repository.

Another hassle I got rid of was to manually check-out every file I want to edit in perforce. With git, its not necessary.

I sign-off as a happy user!

Update:
Here is the link I was talking about.
http://repo.or.cz/w/git.git/tree/ff6d26a0e1d8fad775010fa3b689c0c027da8bb0:/contrib/fast-import