Eclipse + Perforce: Is it possible to avoid interrupting a build to check out a file?

Question

This may be somewhat obscure but I've been happily using Eclipse + Perfoce/P4WSAD for over a year now and have thus far been unable to figure this out myself. I often start a build and let it run in the background while I continue to edit source files. The problem occurs when I try to edit a file that is not checked out from perforce. In this case, eclipse pops up a modal dialog box that forces me to choose between either canceling the build or canceling the check-out operation. So usually I just cancel the build, check out the file, and start the build up again, but this is very time consuming. Is it possible to get eclipse to allow check-outs during builds?

Answer 1

A simple solution (although it can be disk-space consuming) is to have a building branch on which you merge any of your recently committed development (simple merges with no conflicts: you overwrite what is on the build branch).

Another eclipse project references that build branch sources and builds it whenever you want, while you edit the sources of your first original project.

Answer 2

I don't know, but you may want to check with Perforce on this (as this might be something specific to their plugin rather than something in the team su8pport), I never have this problem with SVN or CVS (though maybe my builds are not big enough). Also from what I understand the first generation Perforce plugin had major problems, but they have a new one that's much better. You should make sure you are on the new one.