Perforce Live Feed on Nextcloud

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Nextcloud app that provides a fully searchable, live feed of checked out files and pending changelists, minimising workflow overlap and accelerating file debugging and diffing, instantly becoming a daily tool the team relies upon.

Linux

Web Dev Perforce Nextcloud

CSS Optimisation Tools

Highlights

Built a custom Nextcloud Live App that hooks into Perforce via CLI shell scripts, stripping away P4V's clunky interface for a clean web dashboard.
Solved performance lag by adding a Local JSON Cache and custom PHP env wrappers to handle heavy P4 queries seamlessly.
Cleared team visibility bottlenecks with a Searchable Activity Feed, turning raw CLI logs into live updates on who is editing what.
Turned a brand new workflow into an essential Daily Routine, helping everyone jump into work fully prepared with instant context.

Making Perforce a little more Accessible

While Perforce is an industry standard, its interface and visibility felt a little too complex for the team. They would frequently start their day unaware of exactly what others were working on or which files were currently locked, especially in the early days of getting everyone onboarded to Perforce.

To solve this, I developed a custom Nextcloud application that ties directly into our Perforce server. This integration provides a live feed of project activity right in the browser, completely removing the friction of traditional clients, and lets you see checked out files without opening the engine!

Live Tracking & Preparation

By exposing Perforce data through Nextcloud, the app instantly transformed how the team worked:

Live Activity Feed: Team members can see exactly what files are checked out and view pending changelists in real time. This lets everyone feel more prepared starting their day, with full awareness of ongoing work.
Proper Search: Fully searchable submissions and pending changelists allowed anyone to quickly find when specific revisions happened.
Better Context: Having a highly searchable, web based history provides immediate context when diffing files or debugging tricky issues.

Self Hosted Developement Environment

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Deployed a centralised Nextcloud and Perforce server environment tailored to the team's pipeline, easing asset management and establishing a reliable, autonomous version control.

Linux

Web Dev Perforce Nextcloud Cloudflared

NGINX TrueNAS Tools

Highlights

Built a custom TrueNAS & Perforce Server from spare office PC parts, completely eliminating Git LFS merge nightmares and monthly cloud subscription fees.
Bypassed WAN TCP limitations by chaining Cloudflared Tunnels with NGINX SSL, granting the remote team seamless, secure access without finicky VPNs.
Deployed a centralised Nextcloud Asset Hub featuring in-browser 3D FBX inspection so the team can preview models without opening a game Engine.
turned a fragile, overlapping pipeline into a Zero Cost Hub, delivering instant version control relief and immediate access for the entire team.

Squashing a Bottleneck

As our project grew, our team started tripping over each other’s workflows on GitHub, leading to several near miss merges and frankly very unorganised asset managment. At the same time, subscriptions like Google Drive and Google Workspace were becoming unnecessarily expensive to maintain as file counts exploded, especially if we were to expand the team in the future. It was a castle built on sand.

To minimise these bottlenecks, I built a dedicated server using spare PC parts sitting around the office, supplemented by a few cheap hardware upgrades. The goal was to create a single centralised and accessible infrastructure that gave us total control over our pipeline without ongoing software costs.

Asset Management with TrueNAS & Nextcloud

The foundation was built on TrueNAS hosting Nextcloud to handle general asset storage. To make local services accessible anywhere without exposing vulnerable ports raw to the internet, we implemented Cloudflared tunneling and reverse proxies.

Secure Remote Access: Cloudflared tunnels forward local server ports, allowing remote team members to access TrueNAS and Nextcloud from anywhere.
Workflow Integration: Integrated browser friendly tools, such as native FBX 3D viewers, directly into Nextcloud so team members can inspect 3D assets without launching the engine.
Easy Storage: Google Drive-like experience for zero monthly software fees, making asset sharing across team members immediate and organised.

Best part is, all of this is accessible in browser, which means mobile interaction is inherently supported! Let me tell you, It’s a pretty cool feeling popping into the office and loading up a new asset on your phone, spinning it around, zooming in, etc. The power of GPU accleration will never not blow my mind.

Perforce Architecture & Routing Challenges

Deploying Perforce alongside Nextcloud proved significantly more challenging due to how Perforce handles raw TCP connections over WAN setups. This frankly took a tonne of trial and error to get right.

The Initial Attempt: Mesh VPN

I initially tested routing traffic through Tailscale VPN straight to the server’s home IP, allowing folks to connect “locally” via TCP on port 1666. While functional for testing, forcing an entire team to maintain active VPN tunnels was far too finicky and fragile for daily production.

The Solution: Cloudflared + NGINX SSL

To achieve a seamless, client-side connection experience, I ended up chaining together a pipeline consisting of Server Port Forwarding, a Cloudflared TCP Tunnel, and NGINX for SSL termination. SSL Certification was truly the rotten cherry on top of such already difficult cake.

While routing through multiple tunnel and proxy layers introduces a minor network latency overhead, in practice we found the connection speeds feel identical to commercial cloud drives.

Results & Workflow Impact

Building the infrastructure from scratch provided deep insight into Perforce’s underlying architecture - moving far beyond basic checkout/submit mechanics to configuring Streams, Depots, Workspaces, and Revision histories.

No Merge issues (yet): Stopped workflow collisions and merge risk caused by mismanaged Git LFS setups.
Instant Adoption: The team instantly gained a secure, central hub accessible via simple web links and standard logins, immediately becoming a part of people’s daily workflows.
Customisable to your heart’s content: This is an environment where custom editor utilities, automation tools, and project settings can be pushed centrally to support team needs, for example this other cool project I put together

Nextcloud |

Perforce Live Feed on Nextcloud

Highlights

Making Perforce a little more Accessible

Live Tracking & Preparation

Self Hosted Developement Environment

Highlights

Squashing a Bottleneck

Asset Management with TrueNAS & Nextcloud

Perforce Architecture & Routing Challenges

The Initial Attempt: Mesh VPN

The Solution: Cloudflared + NGINX SSL

Results & Workflow Impact