Question

I have a client who is rather insistent about using Clearcase. Are there any tools/scripts that would allow my team to work against an SVN repository (or really anything other than Clearcase), but periodically automatically sync back changesets to the Clearcase VOB?

My thinking is that if such a tool exists, and it’s automatic, reliable, and transparent the client might be pursuaded to allow us to work against SVN.

Thanks,
Kent

Answer 1

I use Git directly within a ClearCase view.
Then I could git2svn back the content to SVN if I had a SVN repo to synchronize with.

Note: for a tool to work directly within a ClearCase view, I have to use a snapshot view, in order to write in files even if they are not checked out yet. Then for any activity I consider finished, I update the snapshot view which allows me to list all “hijacked” files. I check-out them, then check-in them.

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The issue I would see with working with SVN in this case (ClearCase repo for the client) would be to:

• introduced another central repository (meaning to commit, you have to have access to your private central SVN repository, and, for “to-the-client commits”, to have access to the central ClearCase VOB – Version Object Base, the “repository” in ClearCase lingo).
• introduced another branch modeling, where in SVN, it is a cheap copy within a directory, whereas in ClearCase, it is a metadata (branch) not represented as a directory. That means the physical tree of a SVN checkout might not match a snapshot view update in ClearCase, because some of the directories checked out by SVN will simply not exist in ClearCase.

At least, with Git, you have:

• private repository (you are not adding another central repository everyone should have access to)
• same branching model (at least when it comes to “not representing a branch by a directory”)