My problem is not the "scary" issue of perforce overwriting my files, but the opposite, that it doesn't.
I want to be synchronized with code other people wrote, so I am doing in perforce: "get revision" and then "force operation" from the stream everyone are submitting their work to (after saving a backup of course for the file I am working on in my computer), but when I open the file in eclipse it remains with my changes.
Further - I am doing some small, deliberate changes in my file, and "get revision" and then "force operation" to it, and the same happens.
I have been working in the same workspace for the last days, and when I did it yesterday it overwrote my files, as expected.
Also, in the "submitted" tab in Perforce this file is not in the list, so I didn't accidentally submitted it somehow.
Also, by opening the file from the File System, my changes remain, so it doesn't seem like a problem with eclipse refreshing or something like that.
Ay idea, anyone?
If the file is recorded as "open" in Perforce (i.e. it is returned by the "p4 opened" command, or it appears in the "pending changes" tab in the GUI), even a force-sync won't overwrite it, because you're still working on it. If you want to discard your changes to get something someone else submitted, do one of these two things:
The first option leaves the file open; the second option does not.
If you want to save a backup of your current work in Perforce (without submitting it), rather than making a local copy of it, you can "shelve" the pending changelist, and "unshelve" it at a later date to return your workspace to the shelved state.