Clearcase administration basic concepts

This article provides an overview of some of the concepts and resources to help you get started with ClearCase administration. There are many resources available that address ClearCase administration. Finding the right information can be an overwhelming task for administrators new to ClearCase. This article assumes no prior knowledge of ClearCase. The first few sections of the article cover concepts and provide examples to help you get familiar with ClearCase administration. Later sections of the article cover planning and ongoing administration activities.

This article takes the approach of learning by experimentation. The article gives a brief description for each example command and provides references for further details. The examples use command line interface to illustrate greater details for deeper understanding. The article provides references to GUI wizards without going into much detail.

Section 1. What is ClearCase?

ClearCase is Rational's market-leading solution for software configuration management system. ClearCase is a powerful system for managing versions of files and directories, generally refers to as elements. Virtually any project artifact can be stored in ClearCase repository called Versioned Object Base or simply VOB. One unique feature of ClearCase is the ability to version directory elements. This capability proved to be invaluable for code restructuring which commonly occurs during development and new releases.

ClearCase provides a rich set of access methods and controls to its repositories. All element access must go through a view. A view specifies a configuration, or config_spec, for selecting elements within a VOB. ClearCase tightly integrates with the underlying operating system to track changes and control access. The ClearCase administrator is the most powerful user having full control of a site installation. On Unix, this would be the superuser, UID=0, on the VOB server. On Windows, it is any user who is a member of the clearcase domain group.

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ClearCase Overview for Beginners

What is ClearCase?

·        ClearCase is a program for software configuration management and version control of all types of files & directories (elements).

·        It enables parallel development on geographically distributed sites.

·        ClearCase runs in both Unix and Windows. There is two interfaces in UNIX, command line (CLI) and graphical (GUI).

·        It enables access to files and directories as usual, but if you would like to change elements you must use ClearCase.

·        The method to work with elements is check-out/edit/check-in.

What is a VOB?

·        A VOB (Version Object Base) is a database (repository) that stores version-controlled elements, such as source files, binary files, directories etc.

·        You must mount a VOB (make a connection) before accessing the elements in it.

·        A VOB can be mounted on some or all workstations.  A project can have more than one VOB.

·        ClearCase protects files in the VOB from accidental modification, thereby all the elements is stored as read-only.

·        Each VOB must have a descriptive name, called a VOB-tag. When accessing elements or working with VOBs, you use the VOB-tag. When listing VOBs you see the tag and the storage path like this:

       /vobs/cc_vobtest          /net/wrnsg03/export/vobs/vob1/cc_vobtest.vbs

      VOB-tag                  Storage path

What is a view

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Concepts

• VOB or Versioned Object Base: This is the permanent data repository of a development tree or subtree storing all file system elements. It is typically hosted on in the network on a remote host and mounted as an MVFS file system on the user’s machine.
• View: A view is what you use to access a VOB transparently. Without a view, the VOB appears to be empty.
• Elements,Branches,and Versions: A versioned file system object in a VOB is called an element. There can be multiple versions of each element logically organized into a hierarchical version tree containing multiple branches/sub-branches.
• Config Spec: A config spec is a document that contains a set of rules that is used by the view for selecting the versions of elements. A simplified explanation would be that a config spec is a filter that determines what versions of elements from the vob gets loaded into a view. Typically the Clearcase admin or project lead will provide you with a config spec and it looks somewhat like this:

########################################
# config spec:
# line1 - Select any files I have checked out
# line 2 - Ignore lost+found.
# line 3 - Select the LATEST element on the main branch
########################################
element       *      CHECKEDOUT
element      …/lost+found/…      -none
element      *     /main/LATEST

Of course, a real config spec is much larger and more complicated.

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