Case Study: ActiveState achieves scalable, high-performance, cross-platform version control with Perforce Helix

ActiveState - Customer Case Study

ActiveState, a leading provider of open-source–based programming tools and language distributions, needed a more scalable, reliable, cross-platform version control system to manage rapidly evolving upstream repositories, multiple codelines, product-specific features, and private IP. Their existing Visual SourceSafe setup was slow, unstable, and poorly suited for automation, auditing, branching, remote access, and multi-platform development.

They adopted Perforce Helix Core as the standard VCS, using Perforce conversion scripts to migrate about 16K files in roughly five hours and integrating Helix into nightly build and test frameworks. The switch improved performance, availability, and branching workflow, eased the transition with P4Win, and scaled smoothly to 45 users and 130K files with no database corruption for two years, reliable remote use over slow networks, and strong technical support.

ActiveState