How to Delete a (deleted) Stream

As a P4 administrator, I’m learning the hard way how to do things that really should be easy, but let’s face it… Perforce.

For example, I created a stream with some settings to mess around, and then decided I didn’t like those, so I wanted to delete it and remake it with different settings.

First I obliterated the files with p4 obliterate -y //My/Stream/..., then I ran p4 stream -f -d //My/Stream and p4 reported that the stream was successfully deleted.

When I then tried to recreate //My/Stream with different settings, it kept giving me errors that the stream already existed.

Running p4 streams -a revealed that the stream did in fact still exist in a (deleted) state:

PS> p4 streams -a
Stream //My/Stream mainline none 'Stream' (deleted)

How to REALLY delete a stream

The command below actually deletes the stream in such a way that it doesn’t stay around in a (deleted) (and therefore non-reusable) state in the depot:

p4 stream -f -d --obliterate -y //My/Stream

This will nuke all changes and files associated with the stream, and then delete the stream itself.

Perhaps my Google Fu is sub-par, but I couldn’t find this, and our AI overlords were completely oblivious to this situation as well, so after arbitrarily executing enough random combinations of commands and arguments, I finally found this that works.

Happy deleting. :-)