ClearCase checkout branch in VOB

Question

I'm new to CC and I'm coming from Git and Mercurial background, probably thats why ClearCase confused me so much. I've been assigned a task to migrate latest CC's revisions to Git. Problem is that I couldn't manage to checkout any branch other than main in CC.

I have a view that displays all VOB's /main/LATEST revision. I assume, main branch's latest revision.

element * CHECKEDOUT
element * /main/LATEST

Now I need to get the list of other branches in a particular VOB. To do that, I navigate from terminal in that folder and run

cleartool lstype -kind brtype -invob /%VOB_NAME%

and I can see the list of branches. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume, it displays only the branches relevant to VOB(%VOB_NAME%).

Now I need to checkout the branches. What is the standard way of doing this. I tried updating config spec with something like:

element * /%VOB_NAME%/%BRANCH_NAME%/LATEST but it doesn't seem to work.

Pretty sure I'm not doing it correctly. Also for migration purpose, I'll need to automate the steps to acquire branches and checkout the branches. I guess updating config spec to switch branch in a view takes some time and probably is an async operation, so is there a way to determine when view finishes updating?

Or maybe there's command line option to switch branch for a particular VOB in a view?

So in short, here's my questions I'm struggling with:

Than

1. Am I acquiring VOB branches correctly?
2. How can I checkout a particular branch?
3. Is there a way to determine when checkout finishes?

thanks

UPDATE

ok I tried @VonC's recommendation so my config spec looks like this:

element * CHECKEDOUT
element * .../heine_1/LATEST
element * /main/LATEST

If I'm guessing correctly, one VOB containing branch named heine_1 should checkout that particular branch, the rest of VOBs will stay on main branch, but this is not the case. When I run cleartool ls inside that VOB, its still on main branch. All folders are postfixed with Rule: /main/LATEST. So I guess it didn't switch the branch.

Thanks

Answer 1

There are a few questions in the original question and the comments.

Addressing the configspec issue first...

The syntax of an element rule is: element {path} {version rule} {optional clauses}

If you need a VOB-specific rule, you can do something like this: element \myvob\... ...\myvobbranch\LATEST element \myvob\... \main\LATEST -mkbranch myvobbranch

The "..." in the path means "this location and everything underneath it." The "..." in the "version rule" means that the branch name is at the end, so this would match /main/myvobbranch/LATEST, /main/br1/myvobbranch/LATEST, etc.

If you're working on a branch, you generally want new files or work to appear on the branch you are working in, and the second line makes that happen.

Everything in a configspec is case sensitive, so be aware that "LATEST" is not "latest."

Since the view was created for you, I'm reasonably certain that it is a dynamic view. If it is mapped to a drive, it's definitely dynamic. If you need to know for sure, you can CD into the "working area" of your view and run "cleartool lsview -pro -full -cview" and look at the "attributes" line. The line for a dynamic view will look like this:

Properties: dynamic readwrite shareable_dos

On the direct questions:

1. Yes, you are acquiring the branch list correctly.
2. By default the checkout is done using the version selected by the view, you can use cleartool checkout -branch {full branch path} {file name} to check out the latest on a branch, or cleartool checkout -version {version id} {file name} to check out a version other than the latest on a branch. I would not recommend either as a normal practice. The -branch will cause checkins to go to the element's parent branch. The -version would require add a requirement to perform a merge to get the checkin to complete, which would also go to the version's parent branch.
3. Checkout is finished when the command finishes.

A big "new user gotcha" is that directories are also versioned objects. If you're adding files to source control, you need to remember to check the directory in so that they are visible by others with similarly configured views. The ClearCase GUIs have this behavior as a default if you started the process with the directory NOT checked out, but not if you explicitly checked out the directory beforehand.