Rational® ClearCase LT® Release Notes

In the basic UCM process, the integration stream is the project's only shared work area. You may want to create additional shared work areas for developers who work together on specific parts of the project. Now you can accomplish this by creating a hierarchy of development streams. For example, you can create a development stream and designate it as the shared work area for the developers working on a particular feature. Developers then create their own development streams and views under the feature-specific development stream. In other words, the developers join the project at the feature-specific development stream level rather than at the integration stream level. The developers deliver work to the feature-specific development stream and rebase their streams to recommended baselines in the that development stream.

You can now deliver work from an integration stream or a development stream in one project to an integration stream or development stream in another project. In addition, you can deliver work from one development stream to another within a project. These features make it easier to manage related areas of development within a project, and parallel releases of multiple projects.

The default target for a deliver operation is the source stream's parent stream. You can also deliver work to nondefault target streams. Because any stream can now be the target of a deliver operation, this release adds several policies that you can set on streams to control what kind of deliver operations the target stream will accept. For example, you can set a policy to reject deliver operations that contain changes to components that are not in the target stream's configuration. You can set these policies at the project level so that the policy settings apply to all streams within the project, or you can set the policies on a per-stream basis.

A baseline selects one version of every element visible in a component. This release lets you create composite baselines. A composite baseline is a baseline that selects baselines from other components. By creating a composite baseline that selects baselines from every component in your project, you can use one baseline to represent the entire project.

After you create a composite baseline to represent the project, the next time you invoke the make baseline operation on the composite baseline, UCM performs the operation recursively. If a component that contributes to the composite baseline has changed since its latest baseline, UCM creates a new baseline in that component.

A composite baseline can select other composite baselines. This feature allows you to use a composite baseline to represent a system that consists of multiple projects. The system-level composite baseline can select project-level composite baselines.

You now have greater flexibility in storing components in VOBs. For example, you can now store multiple components in a VOB. Within a VOB you can make an existing directory tree into a component. The component's root directory must be the VOB's root directory or one level beneath it. To store multiple components within a VOB, each component's root directory must be one level beneath the VOB's root directory.

This release adds support for triggers to the following UCM operations

Other new features in this product release include:

This version of the ClearCase Web interface supports the UCM developer role. A developer can use the Web interface to join a project, create new activities, perform work in those activities, deliver work to an integration stream, and rebase a development stream to recommended baselines.

Performing the UCM rebase or deliver operation requires the ability to merge changes in files. The ClearCase DiffMerge tool has been implemented for this purpose within the Web interface context. The DiffMerge tool is called automatically when you do a rebase or deliver operation from within the Web interface; you canalso run the Merge Manager directly from the Web interface toolbar.

ClearCase now provides workspace management capabilities for Web views which are similar to those for standard ClearCase snapshot view functionality on a local copy of element versions.

A new configuration variable has been added to the ccweb.conf file to control the length of time that elapses before an unattended ClearCase Web session times out. The new variable is ‘-session_timeout age_in_seconds' where the minimum value for age_in_seconds is 600 (10 minutes) and the default value is 14400 (4 hours).

It is now possible to specify "interop text mode" as a characteristic of a ClearCase Web view during the view creation process.

Installing the ClearCase Web server components is now optional; previously these components had been installed on all systems.

If you are installing a ClearCase server, the ClearCase Server Options window now includes a check box for installing Web Server Interface Components; the default is to install the option If you are installing a ClearCase client, you must select a Custom installation to install the Web interface components. First select Custom on the Select Configuration dialog, then select the component as desired on the subsequent Choose Features dialog. a new option has been added to the installation.

The online help for the ClearCase Web interface has been updated to reflect the enhanced functionality of this feature. In addition, the chapter Configuring a Web Server for the ClearCase Interface in the Administrator's Guide for Rational ClearCase LT contains updated information on configuring the ClearCase Web server.

The ClearCase PowerBuilder integration has been enhanced to fully automate the deliver and rebase operations. Users can now perform deliver and rebase operations on PowerBuilder Library (PBL) objects. They can also recreate PBLs from versioned objects.

Forte Developer V6.0 now supports a ClearCase integration. This integration provides a set of commands and tools that allow a software development team to share, control and track files created with Forte Developer.

Using this integration, you can check out, modify, and check in your files without leaving the Forte Developer IDE or starting another application. You can also use this integration to access files under version control.

You can access commands and tools supported by the integration from the Forte Developer's Tools menu.

The following ClearCase commands and tools are available:

The above commands and tools give you all the capabilities you generally need.

This version of ClearCase provides an SCC-level integration of ClearCase functionality with Microsoft's Visual Studio version 7 (Visual Studio.NET). Support for the ClearCase toolbar add-in will be available through a ClearCase patch.

ClearCase Version 2002.05.00 includes an updated integration with Microsoft Word that uses a COM add-in. Because the COM technology is incompatible with Word 97, this new integration only works with Word 2000 or Word XP.

However, the old integration is not removed if Word 97 is still installed. If both Word 97 and Word 2000/Word XP are installed, the old integration continues to work with Word 97, while the new integration is installed for use with Word 2000/Word XP.

This release has enhanced support for sharing of dynamic views and VOBs across complex Active Directory configurations.

This support makes it easier for a community of ClearCase users to share dynamic views and VOBs across multiple Active Directory domains in a single forest. Earlier ClearCase releases supported this capability, but may have required workarounds to make dynamic views operate in multiple Active Directory domains in a single forest. This release no longer requires workarounds such as creating direct trust relationships or ensuring dynamic views have more liberal read/write access when created.

chevent type triggers now fire correctly when a trigger is set on MODIFY_TYPE. The chevent operation for element triggers is now a sub-operation of the MODIFY_ELEM operation rather than the MODIFY_MD and MODIFY_DATA operations that it fell under previously.

The clearimport command now checks for VOB locks before processing an element or version. If it detects a VOB lock, it shows a message indicating that the VOB is locked and that it will wait 60 seconds to retry. It remains in this state until either the VOB is unlocked or the user interrupts the import.

Beginning with thise version of ClearCase, use of rmelem is restricted to the VOB owner or privileged user unless no versions have metadata (labels, attributes, or hyperlinks) and all branches were created by the user.

Removing a VOB symbolic link with the rmelem command now causes all-element rmelem triggers to fire. This works only for all-element trigger types and does not work with per-instance triggers.

The view_server now dumps and/or loads very large views. Previously it would fail to dump or load a view if the dump file exceeded 2 GB in size. The view_server now creates multiple dump files for very large views, each of which is limited to about 1 GB in size.

Previously, when diffbl failed comparing imported baselines, initial baselines, or baselines/streams based off imported or initial baselines, against other similar baselines or streams, it displayed confusing error messages. These messages described the failure as resulting from the fact that the baselines or streams involved did "not share a common ancestor (initial or imported) baseline".

Now the error message describes the cause of the failure more accurately as resulting from the fact that the baselines/streams "are derived from different import baselines or the initial baseline".

Table 1 lists new commands in this version of ClearCase LT. In addition, the clearprompt command is now available as part of the minimal developer installation.

Table 2 lists new options and arguments to commands in this version of Rational ClearCase LT.

The -title title option/argument pair, previously used by the ClearCase commands chfolder, chproject, chstream, mkfolder, mkproject, and mkstream, is obsolete at this release of the product.

In addition, the -generate old-object-selector option to the rename command is also obsolete.

The clearexport_ffile command is obsolete; use clearfsimport instead.

Redefinition of element types (mkeltype -replace) is no longer allowed in replicated VOBs.

The ClearCase LT Command Reference is now published in a single edition for both UNIX and Windows. At the beginning of each reference page are tables that show the platforms and ClearCase Product Family products to which the interface described applies.

Large sections of material in the Command Reference have been moved to other manuals, and some material from other titles has been moved to the Command Reference.

In previous releases, restrictions for commands were in a section called PERMISSIONS AND LOCKS. In this release, the section is named RESTRICTIONS. The section that was previously named Permissions Checking is now called Identities. There is a new section named Mastership, which describes any restrictions applied when the command is run in a replicated VOB.

The msdostext_mode reference page now describes the options -r and -f. The -r option resets the line counters for elements of type text_file that have been changed to a binary type, and the -f option forces a recalculation of the line count of all VOB objects of type text_file.

ClearCase LT clients access files in UNIX VOBs through the ClearCase File Server (CCFS) using standard TCP/IP based networking. Similarly, ClearCase LT UNIX clients can access files in Windows VOBs.

For more information about CCFS, see the Administrator's Guide for Rational ClearCase LT.

The file system of the networkwide release host must have sufficient disk space to hold the release area. The minimum disk space required for release areas on different platforms is shown below:

Table 5 shows the approximate disk space requirements for a new installation of ClearCase. These figures are for ClearCase files and upgraded system files only. In addition to the requirements below, the installation needs 15 MB of temporary disk space.

In addition, any host that will have view directories needs enough disk space to contain all files loaded into the views and all view-private files added to the views. The amount of space required depends on the number and sizes of the files in the views.

The ClearCase LT server must have enough disk space to contain the files and databases used for storage of VOB- or view-storage directories. The amount of space required depends on the characteristics and use of the VOBs and views.

ClearCaseLT requires the following software on Windows NT, and Windows 2000:

ClearCaseLT requires the following software on Windows 98 and Windows Me:

Although the standard ClearCaseLT interface is not supported on Windows XP Home systems (and the product cannot be installed on such systems), the Web interface can be accessed from a Windows XP Home system using Internet Explorer 6.0.

ClearCase is a distributed client/server application; many operations initiated on client hosts are completed by server processes elsewhere in the network. Therefore, all ClearCase hosts running Windows NT or Windows2000 must belong to a Windows NT Server domain or an Active Directory domain, except as noted in the Administrator's Guide for Rational ClearCase LT. On all Windows 98 hosts, the Client for Microsoft Networks component in Network properties must be configured to log on to a Windows NT Server domain or an Active Directory domain.

To use ClearCase from a supported Windows host, you must log on to a domain account (not a local, per-system user account). For more information about Windows NT Server Domains, see the Administrator's Guide .

Refer to the Installation Guide for ClearCae LT for installation information. It provides instructions on installing ClearCase LT Server and ClearCase LT Client software, lists software prerequisites, and contains information about removing old versions of Rational software and troubleshooting.

Refer to the License Management Guid for Rational Suite to see licensing information necessary for installation and initial operation of ClearCase software.

If you have a floating evaluation license for ClearCase LT or for ClearCase LT and another Rational Suite product, you must install a FLEXlm server to activate your evaluation license. You can activate your floating evaluation license from the Rational License Key Administrator window by clicking License>Enter a License. For more information on installing a FLEXlm server, refer to the License Management Guide.

This section discusses restrictions or defects that involve the installation of the ClearCase product. Take into account the information in this section before or during installation to be sure that ClearCase software or particular features are installed properly.

You can find up-to-date information on Microsoft Windows operating system issues at the Microsoft Web site, www.microsoft.com.

The Installation Guide for Rational ClearCase LT provides information necessary to install ClearCase LT. Here is some general information to keep in mind about upgrading:

See also Installation Issues.

This version of ClearCase introduces a new feature level, FL3, to support some of its new functionality. To upgrade to the new feature level, you must upgrade systems to the new feature level in the correct order after installing Version 2002.05.00 on all the view and VOB server systems. If you are using UCM, this order is different from the order required at previous releases of ClearCase and MultiSite. The order is:

Note that in a UCM environment, if you do not perform Step , client systems that have not been upgraded to the new release will not operate.

If servers are upgraded to the Version 2002.05.00 before all client systems have beem upgraded, new VOBs must be created on servers that run ClearCase Release 4.x, because Release 4.x clients cannot communicate with VOBs created on systems that run the new release.

Once you upgrade the feature level on your PVOBs, you must also set the recommended baselines on integration streams that are in use. If you do not, existing development stream configurations may be unexpectedly changed when you perform a rebase -recommend command.

For more information, see the ClearCase white paper on migrating to Version 2002.05.00 on the Rational Web site, www.rational.com/support/products/clearcase.jsp.

To evaluate,Version 2002.05.00, you can install it on one or more test systems in your existing environment of servers, clients, views, and VOBs and configure the test systems to use your 4.x license server.

Alternatively, you can install Version 2002.05.00 using temporary evaluation keys on a test system. For more information on evaluation mode, see the Installation Guide for Rational ClearCase LT.

This version of ClearCase introduces a new feature level, Feature Level 3 (FL3). To support all of the new UCM functionality provided with the new release, a PVOB must be upgraded to the new feature level. Until a 2002.05.00 PVOB has been upgraded to FL3, it will support ClearCase Release 4.x clients as well as Version 2002.05.00 clients, but without providing support for all the new UCM functionality delivered with the new release.

Specifically, the following new features are not supported, even on 2002.05.00 clients accessing 2002.05.00 servers, until the feature level of the associated PVOB has been raised to FL3:

Installing this software on a PVOB server that is running a previous release of ClearCase does not automatically change the PVOB's feature level; you must raise the feature level manually. Before raising the feature level, all ClearCase clients accessing that PVOB must be upgraded to Version 2002.05.00. ClearCase UCM operations will fail on clients that run previous versions of ClearCase if they try to access a PVOB whose feature level has been upgraded to FL3.

This release of ClearCase supports the ability to change a stream's configuration from one using a modifiable component to one using a nonmodifiable one. However, we generally recommend that components initially be specified to be nonmodifiable when creating a new project. After verifying that the project builds and tests correctly, update the project policies to allow modifications to any or all components.

If, in a UCM view, you check out or check in an element from a VOB that is not a UCM component, you should not have to select an activity, because that operation is not captured in a change set.

However, if you are in a view that is in a ClearQuest-enabled project, both the Check Out dialog box and the Check In dialog box force you to select an activity even though one is not really required.

Workaround: Select the activity; it will be ignored.

The UCM process in ClearCase is enhanced for sites that have installed RationalClearQuest by a very tight integration between the activity management provided by UCM and the change request management provided by ClearQuest. Use the following guidelines with the UCM-ClearQuest integration.

An error occurred during the deliver.
Unexpected error in deliver.

A stream can be rebased to a baseline that meets the following criteria:.

Additional rules apply to integration streams and development streams in selecting a baseline

Rebase is typically used to advance a stream's configuration; that is, to replace its current foundation baselines with more recent ones. However, under certain conditions, rebase can be used to revert a baseline, and to add or drop a component in a stream's configuration. It can also switch to a baseline that is neither an ancestor nor a descendant of the current foundation. The rules explained above are general rules for all rebase operations. You need to satisfy only the general rules when adding a component to a stream. When you advance, revert, drop or switch a baseline, you need to satisfy the general rules and some additional ones.

To advance a stream's configuration, the new baseline must contain the current foundation baseline.

To revert or drop a baseline for a component in a stream, one of the following conditions must be met:

To switch to a baseline that is neither an ancestor nor a descendant of the current foundation, one of the following conditions must be met:

These rules ensure that any changes made in a stream are not lost when the configuration changes.

If a baseline is recommended for a stream, and then that baseline is removed, clear the recommended baseline setting in the stream by typing the command chstream -nrecommended. Then you can set new recommended baselines by using the command chstream -recommended.

Attache users cannot use ClearCase UCM commands.

Deliver cannot allow changes to a read-only component. This situation can result from someone changing the component modifiability in your project. What actions you take depend on whether you are doing an intraproject or an interproject deliver.

You can recommend a baseline for a stream if the baseline is from the stream or the stream's foundation.

For a baseline not from the stream or the stream's foundation, the following rules apply:

You are not required to recommend a baseline for every component in the stream's configuration.

You can clear the list of recommended baselines. Note that doing this step alone will cause problems when existing development streams rebase to the recommended baselines. The rebase operation will attempt to drop all baselines in the development streams' configuration. This operation will probably fail or produce errors and therefore not desirable.

You can choose to reset the recommended baselines to baselines from the stream or the stream's foundation with or without clearing the recommended list. This allows the stream to return to a known correct state after being changed inadvertently to a bad list.

Delivering selected activities to a non-default target is subject to the following restrictions:

It is possible for a remote deliver to include changes to a component when the component is non-modifiable in the project. This only happens when the remote site has not synchronized with the local site, and does not know that the component has been made non-modifiable. When the integrator attempts to resume the remote deliver, a check is made to ensure that no versions in non-modifiable components will be changed. If there are such versions in the deliver, the operation fails and the user has to cancel the deliver.

In this release, the integration includes a new trigger, which runs on Windows and UNIX platforms. The release includes the source code, in the form of Perl scripts, that the trigger uses. The Perl scripts include extensive comments that describe the purpose of their classes. For additional source code documentation, including an architectural overview and formatted class documentation, contact Rational Customer Support. However, Rational Customer Support cannot and will not support changes that you make to this source code.

The base ClearCase-ClearQuest integration creates a ClearCase tab on your ClearQuest screen. On this tab, if you right-click CC Change Set Objects and then select View Details, the program displays data about a VOB element. If the version-extended pathname is too long to fit in the dialog box, it cannot be viewed in its entirety, because the form does not support horizontal scrolling by default. You may want to modify the form using the following procedure:

If you wanted only the horizontal scrollbase on the name, do the following instead:

If you are using the Web interface in a UCM environment, you cannot use the Web interface to work effectively in projects enabled for ClearQuest. You can view such projects, but you cannot perform any integration operations through the Web interface; also, you cannot use the interface as a suitable client in a UCM project enabled for ClearQuest.

The ClearCase Web interface supports noninteractive triggers. Interactive triggers, such as those that attempt to read input or create a window, fail.

If a trigger attempts to read input using clearprompt, the ClearCase Web interface prints this error:

clearprompt is not supported in the Web interface

If a trigger attempts to read directly from standard input, it receives an error, because standard input does not specify a valid file descriptor.

In addition, any trigger failure in the Web interface context displays this error message:

Interactive triggers are not supported in the Web interface. If the trigger was interactive, it may have failed for that reason.

Trigger script writers can detect whether a trigger is running in the Web interface context by checking for the environment variable ATRIA_WEB_GUI. It is set to 1 if you are running in the Web interface context.

Note that the base ClearCase-ClearQuest integration is dependent on the operation of interactive triggers; for this reason, the ClearCase Web interface is not a viable interface for using that integration.

The Web interface does not support graphical (tree view) comparison of XML file elements; the Web Compare tool displays a text-based comparison for elements of type xml. When comparing HTML files, the program displays the differences in the Compare screen as text, but includes hyperlinks to display the individual files appropriately formatted using your default browser.

In addition, because the Compare tool in the Web interface handles only text files, it does not support comparison of RationalRose or Microsoft Word files.

Windows NT 4.0 sends very large amounts of information to a Web server. This behavior causes the ClearCase Web interface to fail when attempting to check in very large files (on the order of several megabytes). This problem appears to be fixed in Windows 2000.

The Java program used in the Web interface attempts to connect to the Web server to transfer files. Web browsers only allow Java programs to open connections to the server from which the programs were downloaded.

To enforce this rule, the Web browser on the Web interface client must be able to resolve the Web server's host name to an IP address. If you use a host name in a URL that cannot be resolved by the client host, the Java program cannot connect to the server. In this case, Web-interface file-transfer operations such as checkout, checkin, and download fail.

If the Web server is being accessed through a firewall by means of a proxy server, the proxy server being used must support DNS lookup outside the firewall.

When the ClearCase Web server on Windows logs on to a client, it sets the primary group to the designated primary group in the client user's domain account. In Release 4.0, you could not override this group setting. As a result, sites that use domain mapping to allow user accounts in multiple domains to share VOBs could not access those VOBs through the ClearCase Web interface.

Workaround: Specify a configuration variable in the ccweb.conf file, and add a value to the registry that enables domain mapping.

Toolbar popup menus don't close properly when running the Web interface using Netscape Navigator. Rather than closing automatically when the mouse pointer is moved out of the menu location, they close only when you must reselect the menu button.

If you access the ClearCase Web interface using a Netscape browser on a Windows system and also use a version of the Exceed X Windows Server earlier than 6.0, do not let the Netscape window lose its focus to an Exceed window. Doing so causes the Netscape window to restart any Java applets it is currently running, which interferes with file transfer operations, for example, download, checkout, or checkin.

Neither Internet Explorer nor Version 6.0 of the Exceed X Server has this problem.

In order to run the Web interface successfully, the Internet Explorer setting 'Check for newer versions of stored page' should be set to the value "Automatically." To access this setting, click on Internet Explorer ->Tools->Internet Options->Temporary Internet Files->Settings->Check for newer versions of stored page.

The Windows version of the iPlanet Web server does not allow a pathname for an "Additional Document Directory" to contain spaces. Since the ClearCase Web interface requires configuration as an "Additional Document Directory" mapping to the "web" directory under the ClearCase installation directory, ClearCase cannot be installed in a location which contains spaces (for example the 'Program Files' directory) if the iPlanet web server is expected to provide the ClearCase Web interface.

Web views can only be accessed via the Web interface; they cannot be used with native ClearCase interfaces (for example ClearCase Explorer or cleartool). Various native GUIs may allow selection of a Web view (for example as a deliver target), but any attempt to access a Web view using a native ClearCase interfaces will result in a warning or error message.

Rational ClearCase 2002.05.00 introduces a new ClearCase Web interface. This interface is not compatible with Web views created by previous ClearCase Web interface clients. If you want to re-use existing Web views, we recommend that you clean them up before you upgrade the ClearCase Web server host to ClearCase 5.0.

Use the following procedure:

ClearCase is integrated to work with FrontPage 98, FrontPage 2000, Visual InterDev, Microsoft's Save to Web Office 2000 functionality (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) Web Folders.

When using ClearCase with these programs and tools, follow the guidelines below:

The integration of ClearCase Version 2002.05.00 and Visual InterDev may cause corruption and data loss. The problem occurs when user A checks out a file and then user B checks out the same file; user A is permitted to check in before user B. When attempting to check in the file, user A receives an error message and the file becomes corrupt.

There are three ways to deal with multiple-checkout problems in Visual InterDev:

To use the ClearCase integration with Visual Studio, users must do one of the following:

ClearCase uses the Microsoft Common Source Code Control (SCC) interface to integrate with the Microsoft Visual C++ available through Microsoft Visual Studio. ClearCase has support for Visual C++ versions 5.0 and 6.0. You can switch between SCC-support versions 5.0 and 6.0, but only one version can be enabled at a time.

The ClearCase SCC interface for Visual C++ 6.0 also supports Visual Basic 6.0, Visual J++ 1.1, and Visual InterDev 6.0.

Using ClearCase with Visual Studio components requires no special configuration on the part of the user. For more information, see the information on Developing Software in online help.

cleartool checkout .
cleartool mv foobar FooBar
cleartool mv ...
...
cleartool checkin . 

Use the following guidelines when using the ClearCase integration with Microsoft Visual Basic.

Follow the guidelines below when using the Version 2002.05.00 integration with Microsoft Word.

Using the ClearCase integration with PowerBuilder requires some configuration steps. In addition, there are some differences between the integration with PowerBuilder 6.x and PowerBuilder 7.x.

The following problem relevant to ClearCase exists in the Command Reference.

The Developing Software manual for ClearCase is missing information relating to the following topics.

The deliver operation is unable to access the root of the 
'%s' snapshot view. 
(Before trying again, make sure that you can access 
ClearCase properties by right-clicking on the view's root 
directory in the Windows explorer.) 

The following issues exist with online help.

This section describes problems with running tutorials.

In the ClearCase LT printed and online documentation, the names of programs differ from the names that you see on the Start menu. For example, the ClearCase LT Doctor help file says:

To start ClearCase Doctor, click Start>Programs>Rational ClearCase LT>ClearCase Doctor. Note: if ClearCase LT was installed as part of a Rational Suite, the Rational ClearCase LT entry appears below the name of the suite.

The text should show the proper name of the program as Rational ClearCase LT Doctor.