For example, by default files synced to the client from Perforce are read-only until explicitly opened for edit, and files added to the filesystem are unknown to Perforce until they are explicitly added.  Files can be added or updated via the Force.com IDE plug-in as a result of changes made through the Web system menu, e.g., in-browser editing of VisualForce pages, changes to custom objects and attributes, etc.  These changes are brought to the client by doing a Refresh from Server or Synchronize with Server.  When this happens, if the files are read-only the Force.com IDE complains that it can't overwrite a read-only file.  I would hope/expect that it would instead engage any active Team plug-in to ask the user whether it should be checked out for edit.  Similar with any added files.  Instead I have to go to the top of the tree and explicitly check out everything for edit, mark everything for add, and then revert all unchanged files to see my "real" changelist.  Alternatively I can set my Perforce client spec to be "allwrite", but it still doesn't really know which files have been edited or added, so while I don't get the complaints about read-only files, I still have to edit/add the files explicitly.

Hopefully I'm just missing something in the Force.com IDE plug-in, the Perforce plug-in, or Eclipse in general.  I'm very concerned about the potential for human error with the current process...enough so that we're discussing whether perhaps a stateless SCM system like SVN might be better, at least for the Force.com portion of the product.

Thanks in advance for any advice!  I may send the same thing to Perforce support to see if I can make progress on a solution.