I’ve been struggling to install the beast that is Clearcase 7.1.1 on a proof of concept server. In this case the server is a Solaris 10 64bit install running on VMware Fusion 3. One of the initial mistakes I made was to try and run the installation from a network mount. DON’T. Solaris must block the execution of code on some types of removable drives, which in this case was a VMWare Fusion shared folder.

I’m coming to appreciate IBM’s Rational Clearcase, aside from the price point of course. But work have a license for it, and I have to use it. Don’t get me wrong, CVS is fantastic for tracking your small projects or larger ones with average complexity. I still use CVS for my own code, BUT clearcase has these features built in that you just start to take for granted. Here is a list of the ones I think make it a cut above CVS on a time intensive and complex project:

I think I may have stumbled upon the answer. I’m so set in my CVS ways that I though the best thing was to branch the entire top level folder – recursively. What I really was after was a way of setting the configspec on the NEW view I create for the new branch, and making it show code that is labeled with a particcular label, then when it is checked out and in, a new revision exists on the new branch.

I’m so used to making branches in CVS. <br /> cvs tag -b system_test<br /> As the CVS doco states simply, “This splits off a branch based on the current revisions in the working copy”, and these revisions will get assigned the branch name, in this case `system_test’. Simple, powerful enough and quick! But Rational Clearcase is a different beast as I learn it. You have to make your branchtype.