Question

How would you see a specific file version in the ClearCase ?

How to set the right config spec for that specific file?

Answer 1

You can specify a specific selection rule for a specific file, but that won’t help you actually accessing it.

For instance:

element /path/to/my/File /main/4

would select the version 4 of branch main only for /path/to/my/File.
But considering that the parent directories ‘path‘, ‘to‘, and ‘my‘ have they own version (which isn’t likely to be ‘4’), they won’t be selected at all by that single rule.

(Don’t forget that directories are versioned when their content changes: version 4 would mean their content have changed 4 times, in other words, that files or subdirectories have been added or removed 4 times)

To be sure to select the right version for a file, while being able to access it, you need 2 rules in the right order (as explained in “How to create a branch“):

 element /path/to/my/File /main/4
 element * /main/LATEST

That way, you would see the right version in your (snapshot or dynamic) ClearCase view for that file.
But that wouldn’t allow to checkout it (no -mkbranch directive there).