Finally, access to ClearCase

After weeks of waiting, my machine has been setup for ClearCase, and I've got access to the projects ClearCase VOB (ClearCase version 4.2). I've never used ClearCase before, so checking in the last 2 months worth of work was interesting and slightly different to CVS. Supposedly if you can afford ClearCase, it is the best source control system available.

Essentially ClearCase VOBs use a proprietary database format, the Raima database. ClearCase allows a user to have either a snapshot or a dynamic view. In my case, I'm using a dynamic view. The view is essentially your view of the elements in the repository, allowing you to decide what branch, versions etc you want to see and work with. One of the most useful commands I've used in the last few days is :

cleartool lsco -cview -recurse

Essentially a way to check my view to see what files are I still have checked out. The next ClearCase exercise I have on the list is merging my branch with the main branch - I just need to re-run all my JUnit tests against what I have added to my ClearCase view and performance tested the code on the development Solaris server instead of my Windows XP dev box.

ClearCase CheatSheet
Eclipse ClearCase Plugin