ClearCase: comparing archive versions

[Lutz]

Hello,

I refer to the BC2-post "Force Archive View / Switch to File" http://www.scootersoftware.com/ubbth...an=&page=&vc=1. The problem still exists in Cirrus 442. If I compare a versioned archive path\xyz.zip to its previous version the actual version is correctly displayed on the right side of the folder viewer with the zipped files. On the left side I get the error message 'Folder Not Availible (path\xyz.zip@@\main\nnn)'.

As I wrote in "Clearcase-Integration (Dateityp-Erkennung)"http://www.scootersoftware.com/ubbth...b=5&o=&fpart=1, the detection of versioned archives should not be difficult.

First it has to be detected, if a given path is a version extended name ('@@' within the path). Then get the real extension from within the path (works fine with rule detection) and check if this is an archive association. If so treat the given path as a folder.

Greetings Lutz

[Zoë]

Lutz,

This will be at least partially supported in the next release. If I have my ClearCase vocabulary right, it will work for archives in dynamic views but not snapshot views. AFAIK the difference between the two is that a file in a dynamic view actually has "path\xyz.zip@@\main\nnn" as its path on the disk, and files in a snapshot view are stored in the temp directory. The second case would be considerably more difficult to support, so it's unlikely to get fixed.

[Lutz]

Hi Craig,
I don't think it is difficult to support snapshot views. Files in a snapshot view aren't stored in the temp directory. The view selected version of a file is stored on a local or a network drive and the other versions (i. e. to compare with previous) are provided on a clearcase server. In this case both, the 'virtual' path and name (...@@...) and the real filename (CC-server...very cryptic name) of a file version are provided as I posted earlier. To detect a versioned archive the 'virtual' name has to be used and then the real name has to be opened as an archive in the folder viewer.
Greeting Lutz

[Zoë]

Hi Lutz,

I can't read German, so I don't know what your original post said. I've made the best change I can based on what I know of ClearCase.

Without getting too detailed, the code to decide that something is a zip doesn't have access to the virtual filename (from /vcsspec switch), and getting that string into it would require changing a fair amount of code just to handle this one case. Adding support for dynamic views, by comparison, was a single change to one function. Adding support for snapshot views is doable, and I'll discuss it with Tim, but unless we get more requests for it I doubt we'll fix it right now.

There are a fair number of ClearCase users in the beta though, so you can try to drum up support for it.

[Lutz]

Hi Craig,
here is my post again from the cirrus discussion forum Setting Up Cirrus as a Diff/Merge Tool (closed):

Lutz Wegert says:
September 29th, 2006 at 1:34 am
Hi Craig, please don’t forget file compare in CC-snapshot-views:
param 1: -fname
param 2: …\test1\txt1@@\main\1 (title1)
param 3: -fname
param 4: …\test1\txt1@@\main\2 (title2)
param 5: \\server\share\…\cdft\…\6e2fa81326774d249d01dc738f d695dd (file1 to open)
param 6: \\server\share\…\cdft\…\94022c18bfe14418ba58eec592 a3f7bb (file2 to open)

In this case param2 and param4 have to be used for archive detection and displaying the titles and param5 and param6 are the versioned archives to be opened in the folder viewer.

Greetings Lutz

BTW: For other clearcase elements (i. e. source code) the detection works excellent. The titles show param2/4 by default, selecting the title field shows up the real name (param5/6).

[Zoë]

That's exactly the case I thought it would be. The difficulty wasn't decoding the original filename, it was getting the "virtual" filename deep into the system where we decide whether a file is an archive or not. That decision is in a completely different area than the file format matching.

Anyway, we like making our ClearCase users happy, and I have fixed this for the next release.