Perforce at Home

To help keep better track of my personal software projects and web sites, I’ve set up an installation of Perforce on my Win2000 server. I contemplated using CVS or another open-source solution, but I’m already using Perforce at work so I can just start using it straight away.

Perforce’s licensing policy is to allow one to run a Perforce installation for free (no license needed) for a maximum of two users and two client specs. (A client spec maps the Perforce depot locations to local directories — normally you’ll need one client spec per computer.) They also provide evaluation licenses for multiple uses — and, free support during evaluation.

This is perfect for a single-user setup where you want to access it from home and from a remote location (like your laptop). If you were going to do a multi-person project, the cost might be prohibitive once you add a couple of people.