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ClearCase for Linux 109

Posted by HeUnique from the another-big-one dept.
An Anonymous Coward sent me an email he got "...It is not Rational's policy to disclose future plans on this mailing alias, But, we want you to know that we do listen to your requests, and have heard loud and clear your need for ClearCase to support Linux. The ClearCase team is currently working on supporting Red Hat Linux in a future ClearCase release". Keep them coming...
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ClearCase for Linux More

ClearCase for Linux

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  • Perhaps because CVS is free and ClearCase is not.
  • How come you people always just say "Windows/MacOS is better" but never explain what is lacking in Gnome/KDE/whatever?

  • Feeling a little overhyped?

    • FreeBSD = Welcome Home
  • CC is kind of bogus. What would be nice is Purify, as someone mentioned. Especially for, say, MySQL ;-) heheh...

    Anyways, if there are UML goombahs out there that haven't heard of Dia, LOOK AT IT. It's VERY raw right now but one of my favorite special-purpose tools. I started working on getting it to make diagrams from SQL scripts (just simple create table foo (YourMom varchar(255), Foo int); type stuff) and got distracted, but it doesn't look like it will be harder than necessary. The output format is XML and there's an active user community. Here is the homepage:

    http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/dia.html

    I think version 0.40 will be coming out soon.

  • Is this supposed to be a disparaging remark or is this, somehow, the rallying call of Slackware users?

  • bleh (Score:1)

    by kfort ( 1132 )
    just what we need, another proprietary software company exploiting linux. Don't act like they are doing anyone besides themselves a favor.
  • This company isn't interested in helping linux grow. linux will grow with or without them. They are porting their software to linux so their company can grow. They want to make money, and linux has come to a point where they feel they can make money off of it. It is still proprietary software, with no freedom. They aren't "supporting" linux, they want linux to support them.
  • You can look at one little thing of the many that makes ClearCase so superior to any other system of its kind, and it all becomes clear:

    > clearmake
    mkdir -p objs

    Wink in derived object "objs/path_util.o"
    Wink in derived object "objs/string_util.o"
    • .
      .
      .


    "In true sound..." -Agents of Good Root
  • ClearCase keeps track of builds thru configuration records. With this ClearCase handles all dependancies of the source, and maintains all configuration records of derived objects (object files). Because of this, within parallel-development environments, there is a good chance for developers to be trying to compile the same identical object. Since ClearCase maintains the configuration records, it knows enough that that object already exists. In stead of recompiling the object it "winks" it in meaning it sets a link to the derived object pool.


    A senerio:

    Suppose that you build program hello in a view that is configured to select the most recent version of hello.c to which the attribute QAed has been attached with the value Yes. This turns out to be version 12 on the main branch.

    A suer discovers a bug in hello that the QA department did not catch. As a result, the QA manager removes the attribute from version 12. now, version 9 is the most recent version with the attribute, so your view is dynamicly reconfigured to access that version.

    You enter a clearmake hello command. Since the version of hello.c in the view (/main/9) does not match the version in the config record of your current instance of hello, clearmake either winks in the object if someone has already built it or clearmake rebuilds it.

    A standard make program would have been fooled by the recent time-modified stamp in this situation. The program hello is not out-of-date with respect to version 12 of hello.c, so it is certainly not out-of-date with respect to the even-older version 9. Thus, the standard make algorithm would have declared hello up-to-date, and declined to rebuild it.

    "In true sound..." -Agents of Good Root
  • It's called Configuration Management.

    You don't port an application to Linux, because Linux is just a kernel. You need to port them to a specific version of the OS, or rather distribution.

    Otherwise how are you going to know if the application is going to work when you developed it on RedHat and someone installs it on Slackware 1.0?


  • I agree, Purify is the only reason i even go near solaris, as its available there. It's one of the few things i think id throw some money at if it was available. I have to say i really like it.

    C.
  • I reckon you'll find this happens more and more. Think about it,
    developers are going to target the company that gives them the
    greatest exposure, marketing clout and market.


    Who's to bet that RH is going to win hands down in the developer market.
    An article in the local rag (www.it.fairfax.com.au - article not online)
    explained how Caldera (www.calderasystems.com) is aiming to the busines
    market, RH has like 72% of the 18-24YO developer market (how they make
    these claims I do not know?)
    So watch for the software companies
    targeting the various L*nux brands along the following lines
    • Red Hat = developer tools,games?
    • SUSE = euro, might miss out, home users, first time market
    • Debian = choice of hackers/purists, no market there
    • Caldera = biz users, hence applications

    what I would like to know is which of these distributors is going to best
    support game s/w,RH?

  • You could always help fix GNU Checker [gnu.org], which provides similar functionality in gcc. Unfortunately, Rational has a bunch of obnoxious software patents on Purify that they will defend.
  • I've worked with ClearCase before (as recently as a week, actually). I've never heard of a Windows-based vob server (vobs are where the versions are stored, like a the CVSROOT in CVS). I'm sure they exist, but no one in their right mind would use them. ClearCase is available for Windows (9X/NT), Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, AIX and probably other unices. The best part about it is the MVFS (the filesystem); although it is probably not suited well for remote development, where a local copy of the source tree is preferable to a shared filesystem. They do have a version called Attache which I think does use a local copy, like CVS; but if your development is going to use this extensively, you might as well use CVS or Perforce or something, which is considerably cheaper.

    The best thing about ClearCase on Linux is it is one less obstacle for maverick employees to install Linux on their workstations at work ;-)

    Now if they would only port Rose 98....
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • What version? How's it compare to the Windows version (in terms of features and compatibility)? I worked at a co-op where both ClearCase and Rose are the main obstacles to 100% Linux development. If Rose for Solaris worked good, then it could run on the Linux display. A native Linux version would still be good, because then the astronomical server resource consumption can be distributed to the workstations.
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • I too worked at a place where they switched from ClearCase to Perforce. Actually I like the MVFS concept, although I do admit Atria's (now Rational's) implementation in ClearCase is very slow and bandwidth intensive. ClearCase is much more robust than Perforce, but if you don't need that robustness, then there's no point in paying for it. Perforce also has a Linux client (which can be downloaded for free, separate from the server), so that's a plus.

    Despite the Linux and Unices clients, though, Perforce (last I used it, which was last summer) did not seem very interested in those of us developing *on* Unix workstations. There was no graphical tools, which are almost necessary for complex branching (which of course, they tell you not to do, but branching is necessary in a large project) and other complex operations. The company I worked for had to write a Tcl/Tk interface for it. Of course there was a win32 interface already.

    I didn't use Perforce much (I left the company during the transition), but I don't see it as much but a upgrade of the functionality of CVS. I doubt there is much Perforce can do that a relatively simple frontend for CVS could do. And CVS is free software.

    That being said, if there was a VFS interface for CVS, then most of what ClearCase is good for would be co-opted as well.
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • No...RCS itself sucks without a frontend like CVS to it; by itself it's only good for small projects.
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • I agree with the earlier comment that Ctrl+C alienates Macintosh users.

    But hey, why not have BOTH Alt+C and Ctrl+C do a copy? This is the sort of solution ideas we need.

    (really in my code I use Ctrl+C for copy, for the same reason that MicroSoft does: I don't want to interfere with the use of Alt+C to copy other data (like graphics) and was too lazy to write the program to analyze what you selected last.)

  • I think the "taskbar" equivalent is more the Apple pulldown menu off the icon in the upper right that shows which app is current, not the finder.

    I am quite glad Windoze has those individual menu bars, as otherwise we would be stuck with click-to-type because of people copying the one-menubar interface... Right now Point-To-Type support is probably Linux's #1 User Interface advantage over other systems. (the fact that you can click on a window without raising it under both click and point to type under most window managers is perhaps #2)

    I do hate both of KDE and GNOME for not figuring out a way to provide users with the controls without wasting the screen space with a "taskbar". I personally would like to see both the "taskbar" and "start button" combined into a single pop-up menu that takes ZERO space when not being used.
  • any source code control/configuration management system that requires KERNEL MODS to run is right out in my book
    And, as has been discussed to death in another article here, if they require kernel mods (rather than just an installable module), they will have to supply the entire source code of the kernel components of their system in order to meet the requirements of the GPL.
  • Oh, please, let's not start this up again!

    A kernel module has to be linked to the kernel in order to work. The process of linking is the creation of a derived work.

    Linus has explicitly granted permission (beyond the scope of the GPL) for distribution of binary modules that install into the kernel, provided that they don't require any other kernel modifications.

    If you want to distribute a binary-only kernel module for Linux, and you need to modify the standard kernel code to make it work, you're SOL.

    We don't want proprietary crap in the kernel, and allowing binary-only modules at all is a big concession; allowing that to be combined with arbitrary hacks would allow anyone to make arbitrary amounts of the kernel proprietary.

  • Now all we need is for Rational to port over their "Rose" UML tools, and I could FINALLY dump that stupid NT box I've got chained around my neck at work!
  • The place I had been at for about 4 years had several different software departments (yes, we talked to each other :-) Our dept used CVS, another one used RCS. The RCS one's management decided they had to get a real ($$$) system; they bought clearcase for who knows how much money. It required its own SunOS server, it crashed several times and took them a day to recover. I refused to use it. CVS is great.

    Long Live CVS!

    --
  • Unix lets you use the design tool you were born with. M$ forces you to use ONLY m$-brand of canned pre-digested mis-design tool.

    --
  • Because they have to know what system configurations they are supporting. That is why LSB is important. Its very naive of those who do not want a single company to dominate to oppose it.
  • I'm not a massive clearcase fan, but at least this might let us stop using the evil NT port. It really sucks.
  • Well, those kernel mods let you use non-clearcase aware tools to do development. If you have ever used clearcase, you would appreciate it despite the required kernel mods.

    The kernel mods needed should be pretty minimal, because as I understand it most of the work is done by a daemon. With linux's VFS layer in the kernel, it should not be too hard to implement the kernel support. In fact I even volunteer to help, if they are looking for help! (It would be a fun project, I think...)

    I have to say that ClearCase is the coolest thing since sliced bread! With clearcase for linux I would be able to use my linux box for more than just an x-terminal!

  • No, actually they would be doing me a favor... and I am sure I am not the only one who uses a perfectly good linux box as an X-server half the time because we need solaris to use clearcase.

  • I'm sorry but KDE 1.1 is *way* better than *anything* M$ has shown me to date.
    3.1- not bad, not good, but more on the bad side
    95/98- Better, actually not than bad, but unstable
    KDE 1.0- pretty damn good, about par with 95/98
    KDE 1.1- much better, lower mem usage, much prettier...
  • As a person who has actively studied UI design at a graduate level, I doubt you've seen REAL UI.
    One of the projects we're working on currently is a ergo-design station area with extremely enhanced UI's including 3d fully rendered FS plots, app. manipulation with retinal/nuero resistive reponse etc.

    Let's look at words like "discoverable", "UI enhanced experience", "inititiveness", and a thousand other made-up M$ words lack have no substance but have thousands of sheaple that follow it.

    First of all, M$'s interface is nothing new. They stole much from the X-Windows of Unix, not to mention much of the NT code is most likely a clone of some OS2 stuff... badly mangled at that.

    GNOME & KDE represents power and configurability that doesn't talk down to the end user.
    Are they the end-all of UI? Of course not but we have to have some familiar ground to get the sheeple using windows to Linux and allow them to feel comfortable in an environment with familiar objects. GNOME & KDE are also much more stable and functional than the MS-Windows UI and considering the fact that these UI's have been around for 2 years or less and have this much functionality says much for the OSS development process and less for Microsoft.

    You may wish to refer to the GTE study of 1998.
    A call-center of 733 people all of whom were using MS-Windows based workstations were chosen.
    In this center down time cost approximately $480,000 USD$ per half 20 minutes. (when you call GTE you are calling this center) when these people were switched to Linux based workstations, with only 1 day of training, their productivity went up by 36%. This is a gain of over 3 Million dollars per week.

    Don't tell me about UI usability. Prove it!


    Nick
    Linux Systems Group



  • As a person who has actively studied UI design at a graduate level, I doubt you've seen REAL UI.
    One of the projects we're working on currently is a ergo-design station area with extremely enhanced UI's including 3d fully rendered FS plots, app. manipulation with retinal/nuero resistive reponse etc.

    Let's look at words like "discoverable", "UI enhanced experience", "inititiveness", and a thousand other made-up M$ words lack have no substance but have thousands of sheaple that follow it.

    First of all, M$'s interface is nothing new. They stole much from the X-Windows of Unix, not to mention much of the NT code is most likely a clone of some OS2 stuff... badly mangled at that.

    GNOME & KDE represents power and configurability that doesn't talk down to the end user.
    Are they the end-all of UI? Of course not but we have to have some familiar ground to get the folks
    using windows to Linux and allow them to feel comfortable in an environment with familiar objects.

    GNOME & KDE are also much more stable and functional than the MS-Windows UI and considering the fact that these UI's have been around for 2 years or less and have this much functionality says much for the OSS development process and less for Microsoft.

    You may wish to refer to the GTE study of 1998.
    A call-center of 733 people all of whom were using MS-Windows based workstations were chosen.
    In this center down time cost approximately $480,000 USD$ per half 20 minutes. (when you call GTE you are calling this center) when these people were switched to Linux based workstations, with only 1 day of training, their productivity went up by 36%. This is a gain of over 3 Million dollars per week.

    Don't tell me about UI usability. Prove it!


    Nick
    Linux Systems Group
  • For those who say that Microsoft has the lock on UI design, I say this. As a person who has actively studied UI design at a graduate level, I doubt you've seen REAL UI.
    One of the projects we're working on currently is a ergo-design station area with extremely enhanced UI's including 3d fully rendered FS plots, app. manipulation with retinal/nuero resistive reponse etc.

    Let's look at words like "discoverable", "UI enhanced experience", "inititiveness", and a thousand other made-up M$ words lack have no substance but have thousands of sheaple that follow it.

    First of all, M$'s interface is nothing new. They stole much from the X-Windows of Unix, not to mention much of the NT code is most likely a clone of some OS2 stuff... badly mangled at that.

    GNOME & KDE represents power and configurability that doesn't talk down to the end user.
    Are they the end-all of UI? Of course not but we have to have some familiar ground to get the folks
    using windows to Linux and allow them to feel comfortable in an environment with familiar objects.

    GNOME & KDE are also much more stable and functional than the MS-Windows UI and considering the fact that these UI's have been around for 2 years or less and have this much functionality says much for the OSS development process and less for Microsoft.

    You may wish to refer to the GTE study of 1998.
    A call-center of 733 people all of whom were using MS-Windows based workstations were chosen.
    In this center down time cost approximately $480,000 USD$ per half 20 minutes. (when you call GTE you are calling this center) when these people were switched to Linux based workstations, with only 1 day of training, their productivity went up by 36%. This is a gain of over 3 Million dollars per week.

    I believe that the next two years will have KDE and GNOME working on their wonderful desktops, coming out with much increased functions/features and others coming out with radical new UI's like those mentioned above. Linux lends itself naturally to these improvements by it's file system layount and it's OSS design paradigm.



    Nick
    Linux Systems Group
  • What are the advantages of TogetherJ over Rational Rose? What things is it best suited for?
    Where can I find it? Does it run on Linux?

    Thanks,

    Nick
    Linux Systems Group

  • I'm sorry, but any source code control/configuration management system that requires KERNEL MODS to run is right out in my book. That kind of stuff DOES NOT belong in the filesystem/kernel. CVS all the way!
  • The two ain't hardly equivalent. The job of the file system is to provide you with files, pure and simple. If you're going to start down that road, why not put all the baggage into the filesystem that Windows has? You could certainly make an argument for it. Why not put a C compiler in there as well? The philosophy of Unix has always been "keep it simple".

    I would also add that while it might not be a problem vis a vis Linux, supporting Clearcase with commercial *nix systems (Solaris and Irix) is a royal pain in the patoot. You are STUCK at whatever rev of the OS that Clearcase currently supports, and until they release a new version, you CAN NOT MOVE FORWARD. And heaven forbid you let your support contract lapse. I think you get the picture.
  • I would have to agree here. ClearCase is an amazing piece of source code control software. We use it where I work, and I am always amazed at what it does. To be able to view files in source code control, then CD into that file, and view all of its revisions as a different file, and be able to use any u*ix command on the files is amazingly useful.

    We are already looking into a linux port at my company (those of us in development who hate the NT port (native Solaris)) and this will only simplify things greatly (we had been thinking of NFS exporting the source code, which clearcase also supports)
  • I don't know about the rest of the company, but the part that makes ClearCase knows very little about NT. We use the Solaris version of ClearCase, so they wanted to use ClearCase under NT as well. We had to have several visits from people from ClearCase out on site to work on the NT install, and it still doesn't work nicly. The ClearCase portion is very definatly a unix house...
  • I've noticed a disturbing trend of commercial software being ported to specific distributions of Linux. I run both Red Hat and Debian, and will be setting up a Slackware before much longer. I would prefer that any port of Rational's software be for "Linux", not a specific distribution.
  • I know it sounds like Pointy-Hair-Boss speak, but if you are going to dedicate yourself to producinr reproducable results you need more than just a tool. If you work on a large project you need a plan that involves periodic merging of branches and advance of a common baseline. Otherwise you end up in just the situiation you describe.
  • I don't care what kind of software is coming to linux. Freed or not, the more the better. Some vertical market stuff isn't going to attract enough interest amoung the linux open source developers. Myself, I am REALLY looking forward to Codewarrior/linux. I use it already on my Macs and PCs, and love it. It's a natural for use with linux. Even though it's not free.
  • There isn't a major software development project
    within a large company that doesn't use CC.
    If the company is serious about their sw development, then they eventually find their way
    to CC. It does so much more than CVS or RCS is even capable, and is much better at what it does
    than anything else out there.
    There's no problem with them porting to Linux, and
    there's no problem with them making money from it.
    This is a product that companies are already spending 100s of 1000s of dollars on, in addition to the money they spend for the HW/OS platform to begin with. Let them port to Linux, and let me save $5k per hw platform so I can put a real OS on
    people's desk! That will only help us show others
    the real power of freed sw!
  • I want a clear case to mount my mb and cards in. Does anyone make them?

    jeff
  • Nope not really, Our ad runs on slashdot at the top.
  • I want to know why people are trying to make programs look like WinXX software?? I mean look at star office,
    Almost a lookalike. Where's the Kickbutt looking software that shows the TRUE power of Linux. I say quit with
    the MS lookalike and lets make software for a new age, with more new looks! As you might of guessed Linux is
    going to go big!
  • Sheesh all i'm trying to do is tell people about something that would want to know about. We have had alot of "Real World" problems, Sheesh we was apart of the Linksys tulip fix for linux, for the 10/100 Mb problem, We could of just went with a os that had support, But why? Why not fix the problem .. I mean if there gonna let us use a os thats free of cost, You can get linux for $50.00 at a store for the box, books, cds. I'm just giving back to the world as linux as gave to me. No BS haha.. But before the os can go big the support has to be there, You can work on a car without tools 1st. You can have a os with our being able to help the people with the os 1st. So we give free help to people thu email. And phone calls most of the time. support@anvdesign.net
    :)
  • Hey i happen to love star office, But not because of it's looks, But because it's very stable. I have dem crashing appz.
  • Sheesh all i was really saying was that I want apps that have a new look, Something new, not a copy of something I could have on NT or win9x, Get new ideas, MS did. They came up with the 95 look, Why not make a totaly new look for linux to just stomp all over any other os, I mean if we are gonna support it, and make the lit os big time, Lets really go all the way this time. I've been there watching and helping linux grow as much as i could, It's been a long time.. But linux without big names helping it came this far, Now we have Intel, HP, and other helping, It's time to make something new happen, Quit lagassing on it, Lets get this itch going now.. While we can.

    Hey, If you like MS, thats fine by me, Just don't try to lay the blame on me, You also have about 100,000+ other sysadmins, and programers to flame also... :)
  • Hey it's simple.. If you want crashing apps and sleep statments, Us Windows 9x or NT,

    And if you want raw power and a os than can boot up supporting 10,000+ users on a system costing lest that $1200.00 under 30 secs, get linux and a 300a celeron.. it's a great setup for a linux system, Don't forget SCSI drives.. :)
  • Well DUH! :) j/j

    The only thing i charge for is the setup.
    Everything else is free. Our email is totaly free, And hey some people (maybe not you) but most like not having spam everywhere.

    I mean c'mon i have to make some money to eat off of.. Same thing with the ads on /.

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