[ILUG] Seeking Alternatives

[David Neary]

"John P . Looney" wrote:
> 
>  Other places that I've been have needed a fulltime clearcase admin.
> Clearcase is a perfect example of a technological solution to a social
> problem. The problem being that developers have to sometimes change other
> peoples code - when that happens, the developer should clear it with the
> maintainer, and make sure they are on the same wavelength. If two people
> are editing the same code; that's a project management issue. Clearcase
> lets project managers duck this, and get it to mind people's code for
> them.

We have a full-time ClearCase person - I guess most people who are
buying somethign that expensive, and important to the company, want
fault-tolerance, which is what a full-time admin gives you. It also
gives you one person responsible for the maintenance of the system,
which is a similar idea, I guess, to having only your sysadmins have
root on mission-critical machines - less chance of other people who
think they know what they're doing messing things up.

>  Also, clearcase lets you set hard locks on files. I've heard of cases
> where a developer locks a load of files, and then leaves. It could be
> months before this is noticed, and all sorts of fun ensues getting the
> clearcase admin to find & break the locks.

Yes, it does set locks to a given branch. And yes, that can cause
problems. The easiest way around it, and the way most people here use,
is to have only the maintainers being allowed check-out status on the
main development branches, and allow everyone else to create temporary
branches. That way if your main branch is locked, anyone in your devel
team can undo the lock. And if a temp branch is locked, you don't really
care. It also means that people who want to add code to the main line
must do so via a maintainer, since only they can merge changes into the
main line.

> Kate

Dave.

-- 
		Dave Neary,
	Software engineer, Informix Dublin.
		Ireland.
	Phone: +353-1-409-1357