Why do clearcase static views not update checked out files?

Question

I have a static view with some files checked out that I am working on. Someone else checks in a bunch of changes that I want to add to my view. So, I run update on my view. It turns out they changed a file I have checked out. Now my view is left only partially updated and may not even compile until I figure out which checked out file I have to manually merge.

I know I can reserve my checkouts, but that blocks other devs from checking in stuff they are done with.

According to: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cchelp/v7r0m1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.rational.clearcase.cc_ref.doc/topics/ct_update.htm

update does not apply to files or directories that are checked out to the current view.

So, it seems it's working as the atria/rational/IBM folk want it to work. I don't understand why it works this way.

Is there any way to update my static view and also automatically merge changes into my checked out files?

Answer 1

Is there any way to update my static view and also automatically merge changes into my checked out files?

Not really, since a checked out file is a file being modified locally, and cleartool update tries very hard to not touch any local file.

Your checked out file is selected by the element * CHECKEDOUT selection rule, which means any update won't update it (it is already selecting the right version).

You need to check in those file (triggering the merge, similar to "To merge the latest version to a hijacked file"), and check them out again.

But that isn't always possible since it would make a work in progress visible (checked in) to other views in the same branch.

The only other solution is to compute a patch between the checked in version and your checked out file, and apply that patch cleartool lsco -all -s -cview | xargs cleartool diff -diff, with the difficulty to diff between your checked out version and the LATEST version.