I am not able to find checkout option for a file when I right click on it in ClearCase explorer while the option is available for rest of the files.
The only difference is that the file I want to check in has a very long name ( I am using Windows ).
While I am able to check in via cleartool commands, it isn't possible from front end ( CC explorer) Is there any way to check out such files from CC explorer?
There are two possible causes for a checkout unavailable:
the path of the file itself is too long (combined with the long filename, more than 256 characters): a subst command can help shorten the path.
or the file is already checked out.
A cleartool status can help distinguish between those two cases.
And a cleartool lsvtree -graph aFile (replace aFile with your long filename) can help see the file history and see if it is checked out (reserved or not) in another view.
The window 255 characters restriction for file name can't be bypass or any sidestep if it.
You have the following options:
1. Try to shorten the name. Including all the folders that are the prefix for the view. Like vonC suggested.
2. Try create the view on Linux, and mount the folder to some shared area that can be seen in windows.
3. Use dynamic view, but Im not sure it will work.
Keep in mind, that other apps can also fail even after you solve it for clearcase as it is a Windows problem. Like msbuild or visual studio.
Is there a way to make Progress Developer Studio 3.7 (Eclipse) generate all the wrx files (from the ocx) and place them in for example the rcode folder?
Clarification:
I dont know even how to make one wrx file. Have heard this "They get automatically created as soon as you drop an OCX control onto an ABL frame". But if you have removed that file, can you create it anew without having to redrop the control? And how do you automatically place it in a certain folder?
wrx files contain the properties of an ActiveX you set in the appbuilder.
If you loose the wrx, those properties revert back to default values. You should check-in the wrx files into your version control system together with the source .
To copy the wrx to the rcode directory I use robocopy.
suppose your sources are in a directory named src then you can copy them using
robocopy src rcode *.wrx /s
The wrx-file is generated when compiling in the AppBuilder.
See this entry in the Progress Knowledge base
After a lot of experiments, my team concluded that working with hijacked files in a snapshot view is the most efficient way to use ClearCase version control. The problem is that after each update/merge operation it leaves a lot of garbage in the directory. These are files with extensions like .keep.9 or .contrib.16.
These garbage makes it difficult to see if some file is private and we have forgot to add it to the repository. Is it possible to automatically erase these files?
It looks like you can't configure some files to be ignored, a basic feature of every other version control system.
.keep.x files are generated by a cleartool update -keep.
One solution would be to use a cleartool update -overwrite, which would not generate .keep.x files.
.contrib.x are generate by cleartool merge. See "Explanation of .contrib files left for every version just delivered in UCM".
The general idea though is to find and remove automatically all .keep.x and .contrib.x files after each update/merge, through a shell command.
For instance in Windows:
del /s *.contrib*
# or
for /R %i IN (*.contrib) do del %i
Note that you have other temporary files you need to pay attention to: see About the temporary files created by ClearCase.
Can someone explain how Eclipse's local history works?
I accidentally overwrote a file in a project but need to revert to an earlier version.
Is there a chance that Eclipse has the older file cached somewhere?
To complete CurtainDog's answer: from eclipse FAQ
Every time you modify a file in Eclipse, a copy of the old contents is kept in the local history. At any time, you can compare or replace a file with any older version from the history.
Although this is no replacement for a real code repository, it can help you out when you change or delete a file by accident.
Local history also has an advantage that it wasn’t really designed for: The history can also help you out when your workspace has a catastrophic problem or if you get disk errors that corrupt your workspace files.
As a last resort, you can manually browse the local history folder to find copies of the files you lost, which is a bit like using Google’s cache to browse Web pages that no longer exist.
Each file revision is stored in a separate file with a random file name inside the history folder. The path of the history folder inside your workspace is
.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history/
You can use your operating system’s search tool to locate the files you are looking for.
Note, if your need to import your local history into a new workspace, you will need both:
.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history
.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.project
to have a functional local history in that new workspace.
Try right-clicking on the file in eclipse, and choose Replace With->Local History.
If there's history available, it'll show up as a list of edit times.
But more importantly, as pointed out in other answers, be sure to put your files in version control! SVN is pretty easy to set up (you don't need a server; it can just use the file system); use it even if you aren't sharing with others.
A tip: whenever you hear yourself say "yes!", check in all of your code. 10 minutes later, you'll be saying "how did I mess that up?"
If you have lost a full package structure due to accidental deletion or svn/cvs override, select the project> right click> Restore from local history => select the files.
VonC's answer has all the information you need for finding the location of your code backups. I would simply add that if you are on a Mac or Linux, you can do something like this:
$ cd [WORKSPACE]/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.history/
$ grep -rl "class Foo" . | xargs ls -lt
This will find all the versions of a file that contains a particular string (ie. "class Foo"), and sort them by date/time to easily find the most recent version.
You can use the link http://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_Where_is_the_workspace_local_history_stored%3F is very helpfull
Open the CVS view and you should see a filter for local history. You should then be able to right-click on the correct version and Get Contents or do a manual compare and merge. I'm not sure what the eclipse defaults are for keeping local history but there is a decent chance you'll be able to get your stuff back if you act quickly.
I sometimes use the feature 'Reconcile Offline Work...' found in Perforce's P4V IDE to sync up any files that I have been working on while disconnected from the P4 depot. It launches another window that performs a 'Folder Diff'.
I have files I never want to check in to source control (like ones found in bin folder such as DLLs, code generated output, etc.) Is there a way to filter those files/folders out from appearing as "new" that might be added. They tend to clutter up the list of files that I am actually interested in. Does P4 have the equivalent of Subversion's 'ignore file' feature?
As of version 2012.1, Perforce supports the P4IGNORE environment variable. I updated my answer to this question about ignoring directories with an explanation of how it works. Then I noticed this answer, which is now superfluous I guess.
Assuming you have a client named "CLIENT", a directory named "foo" (located at your project root), and you wish to ignore all .dll files in that directory tree, you can add the following lines to your workspace view to accomplish this:
-//depot/foo/*.dll //CLIENT/foo/*.dll
-//depot/foo/.../*.dll //CLIENT/foo/.../*.dll
The first line removes them from the directory "foo" and the second line removes them from all sub directories. Now, when you 'Reconcile Offline Work...', all the .dll files will be moved into "Excluded Files" folders at the bottom of the folder diff display. They will be out of your way, but can still view and manipulate them if you really need to.
You can also do it another way, which will reduce your "Excluded Files" folder to just one, but you won't be able to manipulate any of the files it contains because the path will be corrupt (but if you just want them out of your way, it doesn't matter).
-//depot/foo.../*.dll //CLIENT/foo.../*.dll
Yes, But.
Perforce version 2012.1 added a feature known as p4ignore, inspired by Git. However the Perforce developers made a change to the behaviour, without justification, that happens to make the feature a lot less useful.
Whilst Git takes rules from all .gitignore files, Perforce doesn't know where to look until you specify a filename in an environment variable P4IGNORE. This freedom is a curse. You can't hack on two repositories that use different names for their ignore files.
Also, Perforce's ignore feature doesn't work out the box. You can set it up easily enough for yourself, but others don't benefit unless they explicitly opt-in. A contributor who hasn't may accidentally commit unwelcome files (eg. a bin folder created by a build script).
Git's ignore feature is great because it works out the box. If the .gitignore files are added to the repository (everyone does this), they'll work out the box for everyone. No-one will accidentally publish their private key.
Amusingly, the Perforce docs shows '.p4ignore' as an example ignore rule, which is backwards! If the rules are useful, they should be shared as part of the repository.
Perforce could still make good on the feature. Choose a convention for the file names, say p4ignore.txt, so the feature works out the box. Drop the P4IGNORE environment variable, it's counterproductive. Edit the docs, to encourage developers to share useful rules. Let users write personal rules in a file in their home folder, as Git does.
If you know anyone at Perforce, please email them this post.
This works as of Perforce 2013.1, the new P4IGNORE mechanism was first added in release, 2012.1, described on the Perforce blog here:
https://www.perforce.com/blog/new-20121-p4ignore
As it's currently described, you set an environment variable "P4IGNORE" to a filename which contains a list of the files to ignore.
So you can check it out to see how you like it.
If you want a solution that will apply to all work-spaces without needing to be copied around, you (or your sysadmin) can refuse submission of those file-types through using lines like the below in the p4 protect table:
write user * * -//.../*.suo
write user * * -//.../*.obj
write user * * -//.../*.ccscc
I remember doing this before, but I don't have the necessary permissions to test this here. Check out Perforce's Sysadmin guide and try it out
Perforce Streams makes ignoring files much easier, as of version 2011.1. According to the documentation, you can ignore certain extensions or certain paths in your directory.
From p4 help stream
Ignored: Optional; a list of file or directory names to be ignored in
client views. For example:
/tmp # ignores files named 'tmp'
/tmp/... # ignores dirs named 'tmp'
.tmp # ignores file names ending in '.tmp'
Lines in the Ignored field may appear in any order. Ignored
names are inherited by child stream client views.
This essentially does what #raven's answer specifies, but is done easier with streams, as it automatically propagates to every work-space using that stream. It also applies to any streams inheriting from the stream in which you specify the ignore types.
You can edit the stream via p4 stream //stream_depot/stream_name or right-clicking the stream in p4v's stream view.
And as #svec noted, the ability to specify ignore files per workspace is coming soon, and is in fact in P4 2012.1 beta.
Will's suggestion of using .p4ignore only seems to work with the WebSphere Studio (P4WSAD) plugin. I just tried it on my local windows box and any files and directories that I listed were not ignored.
Raven's suggestion of modifying your client spec is the correct way under Perforce. Proper organization of your code/data/executables and generated output files will make the process of excluding files from being checked in much easier.
As a more draconian approach, you can always write a submit trigger which will reject submission of change-lists if they contain a certain file or files with a certain extension, etc.
HISTORICAL ANSWER - no longer correct. At the time this was written originally it was true;
You can not write and check in a file that the server will use to make ignore rules; general glob or regexp file pattern ignore in perforce.
Other answers have global server configurations that are global (and not per folder).
The other answers show things that might work for you, if you want one line in your view per folder times number of extensions you want to ignore in that single folder, or that provide this capability in WebSphere Studio plugins only, or provide capability for server administrators, but not available to users.
In short, I find Perforce really weak in this area. While I appreciate that those who use the Eclipse Plugin can use .p4ignore, and I think that's great, it leaves those of us that don't, out in the dark.
UPDATE: See accepted answer for new P4IGNORE capability added mid-2012.
I have found it easiest to reconcile offline work using a BASH script like this one:
#!/bin/bash
# reconcile P4 offline work, assuming P4CLIENT is set
if [ -z "$P4CLIENT" ] ; then echo "P4CLIENT is not set"; exit 1; fi
unset PWD # confuses P4 on Windows/CYGWIN
# delete filew that are no longer present
p4 diff -sd ... | p4 -x - delete
# checkout files that have been changed.
# I don't run this step. Instead I just checkout everything,
# then revert unchanged files before committing.
p4 diff -se ... | pr -x - edit
# Add new files, ignoring subversion info, EMACS backups, log files
# Filter output to see only added files and real errors
find . -type f \
| grep -v -E '(\.svn)|(/build.*/)|(/\.settings)|~|#|(\.log)' \
| p4 -x - add \
| grep -v -E '(currently opened for add)|(existing file)|(already opened for edit)'
I adapted this from this Perforce Knowledge Base article.
I'm looking for a .p4ignore like solution as well (and not one tied to a particular IDE). Thus far, the closest thing I've found is p4delta. It sounds like it will do exactly what the original poster was asking, albeit through another layer of indirection.
http://p4delta.sourceforge.net
Unfortunately, while this does seem to produce the proper list of files, I can't get "p4delta --execute" to work ("Can't modify a frozen string") and the project has not been updated in year. Perhaps others will have better luck.
If you are using the Eclipse Perforce plugin, then the plugin documentation lists several ways to ignore files.