{"id":63,"date":"2012-09-08T22:10:35","date_gmt":"2012-09-08T22:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/?p=63"},"modified":"2013-02-08T08:22:37","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T13:22:37","slug":"clearcase-useful-tidbits-from-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/08\/clearcase-useful-tidbits-from-work\/","title":{"rendered":"ClearCase: useful tidbits from work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where I work, the primary version control system used is ClearCase. It’s the first version control system I learned, so even through its challenges, it remains my reference point for learning other version control systems. It’s easy to become familiar with the basics, but I’ve learned a few tricks that I find myself having to re-look-up, hoping I can find them again because I don’t need them frequently. That and, a lot of the tasks we used to do manually, we have rolled into scripts which govern building tasks so less is left to human error. So, here I will note some of the things I’ve found useful, but don’t always remember without looking them up.
\nTwo of my favorite references online are:
\nYoLinux<\/a>
\nPhil for Humanity<\/a> (all the articles labeled “ClearCase Support”)
\nThen you have the regular, old manual:
\nIBM Cleartool Manual<\/a><\/p>\n

cleartool ls<\/h1>\n

We’ll start with something obvious, that I don’t really have to look up, I just tend to have to think for a few seconds before I remember that it will help me figure out why I’m looking at the wrong thing. To clarify, if you’re in a directory, and you use cleartool ls<\/code>, it will list the contents of the directory and which configuration specification rule is active on said item.<\/p>\n

cleartool lsco<\/h1>\n

This, I found, was important for avoiding trouble when importing. lsco<\/code> (or lscheckout<\/code>), as may seem obvious, lists files checkedout. What was useful to me was checking on a specific branch, so I was using something like:<\/p>\n

cleartool lsco -brtype BRANCH -recurse<\/pre>\n
Another useful checkout search is for all your own checkouts (via -me<\/code>) in your view (current view via -cview<\/code>), in all vobs (via -avobs<\/code>)<\/p>\n
cleartool lsco -me -avobs -cview<\/pre>\n
Find a branch or label<\/h1>\n
Need to know what labels or branches exist?<\/p>\n
cleartool lstype -kind brtype -invob \\my_vob<\/pre>\n
The -invob<\/code> option can be super helpful if you are potentially in a different vob.
\nAlternatively, if you want to check if a single label or branch exists, another option is to ask for its description.<\/p>\n
cleartool desc -s lbtype:MY_LABEL<\/pre>\n
Importing<\/h1>\n
We regularly imported source from a vendor, which we added on to, so it was important to keep things organized. This was our standard import call.<\/p>\n
clearfsimport -nsetevent -recurse -mklabel <LABEL> <DIR_TO_IMPORT> <CC_LOCATION_TO_IMPORT_TO> 1> Logfileofyourchoice.txt 2>Errorlogfileofyourchoice.txt<\/pre>\n
Finding things<\/h1>\n
Just as an example, this will find all items on my_branch<\/code> and as it finds each one, it will bring up a version tree for it. This can be useful in small cases, but is not advised when there will be many results.<\/p>\n
cleartool find . -version \"version(...\/my_branch\/LATEST)\" -exe \"cleartool lsvt -g %CLEARCASE_PN%\"<\/pre>\n
(Note: the use of “.” is to indicate that the search should be in the current folder; you may replace this with a different path.)
\nOf course, alternatively, you can get just a list of all the files by replacing -exe<\/code> and its parameters with simply -print<\/code>. It can also be helpful sometimes to find files changed between two points, in which case, in the -version<\/code> parameter block, adding && !version(...\/other_branch\/LATEST)<\/code> is helpful. Note that -version<\/code> isn’t terribly picky, so you can use branches or labels in the ().<\/p>\n
Doing something with what you find<\/h1>\n
In the previous example, the -exe told ClearCase to open the version tree for each file found. Another example is to label each file found:<\/p>\n
cleartool find . -all -version \"lbtype(<LABEL>)\" -exe \"ct mklabel <OTHER_LABEL> %CLEARCASE_XPN%\"<\/pre>\n
Here we use the clearcase special variable (with the extended path name, which would be more important if we changed “.” to a different folder) to indicate the file we’d like to apply a secondary label to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Where I work, the primary version control system used is ClearCase. It’s the first version control system I learned, so even through its challenges, it remains my reference point for learning other version control systems. It’s easy to become familiar … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,27],"tags":[43,30,25],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clearcase","category-version-control","tag-clearcase","tag-cleartool","tag-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200,"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elene.dahners.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}