Perforce Software, Inc. is an American developer of software used for developing and running applications, includingversion control software, web-based repository management, developer collaboration,application lifecycle management, web application servers, debugging tools, platform automation, andagile planning software.
Perforce was founded in 1995 inAlameda, California by Christopher Seiwald, a software developer and computer science graduate fromUC Berkeley.[4] Its first product was also called Perforce, and was a version control system allowing companies to collaborate on large software projects by keeping track of changes to both the source code and binary files.[4][5]
In June 2013, the company released P4 Code Review (formerly Helix Swarm), a tool for developers working in different geographic areas to collaborate on code review.[6]
In June 2014, the company released a version of its Perforce versioning engine, then known as P4D, which supportedconcurrency.[7]
In March 2015, the company renamed its product to Perforce Helix, which now supporteddistributed development and included security features allowing suspicious usage tracking.[8] Helix's security capabilities included IP threat detection, co-developed with analytics vendor Interset.[9] In October, the company collaborated withGitLab to release GitSwarm, a software tool that combined git distributed workflow for developers with Perforce's single code repository.[10]
In February 2016, Seiwald sold the company to investment groupSummit Partners, and Janet Dryer was named as new CEO.[11] The company headquarters was relocated to Minneapolis.[12] In November, Perforce announced the acquisition ofSeapine Software, a provider ofapplication lifecycle management (ALM) tools.[13] Seapine's TestTrack ALM software was rebranded as Helix ALM and eventually Perforce ALM.[14]
In September 2017, the company acquiredUppsala, Sweden-based Hansoft, a developer of Agile planning software.[15] Also in September, Perforce announced it had acquired Finnish repository management services company Deveo.[16] Deveo's products were merged into Perforce TeamHub, its first solo venture for Git-based development teams.
In January 2018, Summit Partners sold Perforce to private equity firmClearlake Capital.[2] In May, Perforce acquired UK-basedProgramming Research (PRQA), astatic code analysis firm.[17] In June, the company announced that CEO Janet Dryer was moving to the role of Chair of the Board, and COO/CFO Mark Ties was taking the role of CEO.[18] In October, the company acquired mobile and web automation testing company Perfecto.[19]
In June 2020, Perforce acquired software developer TestCraft Technologies, a provider of automatedSelenium-based web application testing.[23] In July, Perforce acquired software developer Methodics, a DevOps software provider of intellectual property life cycle management for semiconductor companies.[24]
In October 2021, Perforce agreed to buyBlazeMeter testing platform fromBroadcom Inc for an undisclosed sum.[25]
In April 2022, Perforce acquired thePortland, Oregon-based infrastructure automation software platform,Puppet.[26][1]
Perforce P4 (formerly Helix Core) is the company'sversion control software for large scale development environments.[29] The P4 Version Control System manages a centraldatabase and a masterrepository offile versions.
P4 clients fall into roughly five categories:Git,command,GUI,web, andplugin. The Perforce system can make part or all of its content available as Git repositories. Users of Git and of other clients can work with the same file content and history. Git commits are visible to users of other clients as Perforce changelists, and vice versa. Users submit changed files together inchangelists, which are applied asatomic commits.
Perforce ALM (formerly Helix ALM) is a suite of tools used for application lifecycle management (ALM), allowing developers to manage all their product and system development phases with one product.[13][14] The software was originally developed by Seapine Software, which was acquired by Perforce and rebranded.[30] Perforce ALM provides a centralized suite of capabilities for managing requirements, defects, issues and testing throughout the software development cycle.[31]
Perforce TeamHub is a code and artifact hosting and developer collaboration tool that supports development in Git environments, in addition toApache Subversion andMercurial.[34]
P4 Code Review is a development tool integrated with P4, that allows geographically dispersed developers to coordinate their code review.[6]
Hansoft is software used to support agile software development.[15]
Perfecto is a testing platform for desktop and mobile apps.[19]
TestCraft is an automated Selenium-based web application testing platform.[23]
With the January 2019 Rogue Wave acquisition, Perforce acquired the following products:
SourcePro – software that enables developers to build C++ apps using common APIs that can be migrated from one platform to another[38]
Stingray – a tool for developing object oriented front ends for Windows programming[39]
TotalView for HPC – Debugging software for C/C++, Fortran, and Mixed-Language Python Applications[40]
Visualization – data visualization tools to assist with application development, including a GUI builder and data management abstraction capabilities[41]
Zend Server – a web application server for running and managingPHP applications
^Koc, Guler; Aydos, Murat; Tekerek, Mehmet (September 2019). "Evaluation of Trustworthy Scrum Employment for Agile Software Development based on the Views of Software Developers".2019 4th International Conference on Computer Science and Engineering (UBMK). IEEE. pp. 63–67.doi:10.1109/ubmk.2019.8907213.ISBN978-1-7281-3964-7.S2CID208208412.
