Question

I’m trying to reduce access times to ClearCase a bit, and am thinking about removing all the unused branch types (i.e. ones where no element has a branch of that type in the VOB). Is there a simple query that can return unused types, or do I have to scan for instances for each of the existing types?

I prefer something Cleartool or CAL based, as I want to build a tool that can be used by others.

Answer 1

I didn’t see any “simple query”, so it is best to check for each brtype instance in each vob.
First get the list of brtype for a given vob:

cleartool lstype -s -kind brtype -inVOB

(a bit like in the “Send to mkbranch script“)

Then make a cleartool find to check if any version of a given element exists for one specific brtype.

cleartool find /aVobTag -element "brtype(aBrTypeName)"

Note: looking for elements is faster than looking for version here.

If you have the same name of brtype used in multiple branches, the “Additional examples of the cleartool find command” page illustrates:

How to find elements on a specific branch in multiple VOBs:

 cleartool find -avobs -element "brtype(branch)" -print