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Is there a ClearCase equivalent to hg shelve (or git stash for those of the other persuasion)? The closest I can think of is doing uncheckouts and saving keep files, but that means I'd have to hunt down the keep files afterwards, re-checkout the files and merge. I realize that ClearCase and Mercurial/Git have different philosophies behind them, but I'd be interested if there is any work in making ClearCase more "usable".

Tudor Timi
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2 Answers2

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I listed a few for other version control tools, but none for ClearCase.
I explained, for ClearCase UCM, that a shelve command isn't easy to implement.

Instead of just saving the .keep files, you could save patches (unix diff between a .keep and its original version), since a patch can be re-applied later.

The other approach is to modify the config spec (easier when in a non-UCM view) in order to checking the currently modified versions in a new branch (see this config spec)
You can then decide to merge that branch later.

Community
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VonC
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The philosophy is quite different. In Clearcase, if you need to work on another branch/release, you usually have to use another Clearcase view. If you have Clearcase/UCM, it is even more true as you would use another view attached to another UCM stream. You would not be able to use the same view, whereas in Git, you would be able to stick to the same clone and perform a git stash, git checkout in order to start working on another release.

Now let's assume you need to work on another feature, for the same release. Under Clearcase/UCM, you would be able to create a new activity (cleartool mkact) and work on this new activity, using the same view. All the changes made will then be associated with this new activity. You will also be able to switch back to the previous activity using the command cleartool setact. The tricky part is if you need to deliver the activities separately. This will not necessarily possible as you might need to deliver both at the same time depending on the content of the changeset. This doc about determining dependent UCM activities is quite useful. If you need to move some changeset between activities, you can use the command cleartool chactivity with -fcset and -tcset options.

As a summary, with Clearcase UCM, if it is for different release, switch views and streams. If it is for the same release, play around with the UCM activities, knowing that it is less flexible than git stash.

iclman
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  • I can't use UCM, though. Good input about using a different view though. I was kind of going against the grain with my Hg style thinking. – Tudor Timi Mar 19 '15 at 08:19