Background
In Clearcase, you can get the graphical version tree of a file by entering the following command in a linux terminal.
ct lsvtree -gra <filename>
This brings up an interface with numerous options to look at the diffs between two versions of a file.
Problem
From the graphical tree interface, I am trying to find if a string exists across any version of the file. This string was lost at some point, and I want to figure where that "somepoint" is.
Question
How can I run a text search across all versions of a file in clearcase?
As I mentioned before (2015), there is no equivalent to a git log -S or -G (pickaxe search) in ClearCase.
That pickaxe search is done (in Git) to point out past revision where a string has been added or removed.
But: you would need to script the equivalent feature for ClearCase.
Since cleartool lsvtree shows you all the version of a given file, you can, starting with the most recent version do a cleartool annotate to see when, and in which version, the line was added.
If that line include your string, then this version would be relevant.
If the most recent version does not include your string, then repeat the process with the previous version (do a cleartool annotate on that previous version, if it includes your string).
If you use dynamic views, you could take advantage of how it accesses element versions via version-extended naming. using "foo.c##/main/branch/1" as an example, you have "foo.c##" as the root of a directory structure, with "main" and "branch" being subdirectories, and "1" being a "file"
You can use this by doing the following:
cd to "foo.c##"
Perform your search.
For example:
cd foo.c##
grep -rl "target-string" *
to get the files without the string:
cd foo.c##
grep -rlv "target-string" *
You could also use lsvtree output to power a search in a script, but the above is is the simplest trick to do this. This works on Unix and Windows, but you may want to use something other than the standard Windows "findstr" if your target string contains multiple words, as findstr handles them strangely: findstr "foo bar oof" will print lines that contain "foo", "bar", or "oof", occasionally even when /L for "literal" is used.
If you're using snapshot or web views, this is a lot trickier and will need a script to iterate on the output of lsvtree.
Related
To provide some context, I am trying to write a script which will take a text file with clearcase elements in it, and label all of those elements.
To generate the text file, I am basically using the following command:
cleartool find -a -nxn -ele "brtype(branchName)" -print > "textfile.txt"
Then I go through the text file and remove the elements I don't want to label. The last step would be to feed the text file into a script which would repeatedly call a cleartool command on each line of the file.
For all existing files/folders, I can run this command:
cleartool mklabel -rep "label_name" (element_path)
Where I run into trouble is with files that have been added to the branch. They print out to the text file in a format that isn't recognized by the "mklabel" command and I can't find a good way to parse them.
The format of the files is similar to the following:
\original_folder_path##\branch_name\version_number\new_sub_folder_path\branch_name\version_number\file_name.java
In the past I have used this generic command we use at my company to blindly label all files in a branch:
cleartool find -all -branch "brtype(<branch>)" -version "version(.../<branch>/LATEST) && !version(.../<branch>/0)" -visible -exec "cleartool mklabel -rep <label_name> %CLEARCASE_XPN%"
But I only want to label about half the files on the branch I am using, and there are too many to label them individually. I am sure I am missing something obvious here. Does anyone know how I should change my find or mklabel command to accommodate the new files and folders?
That format "\original_folder_path##\branch_name\version_number" is an extended pathname, and isn't reserved for "added file".
It is current rather for files listed by a cleartool find, but not visible (directly accessible) in the view used by the cleartool find.
You need to make sure to use a view which is set to select the LATEST from brname.
If you see extended pathnames in your cleartool find, you can ignore them: they are not accessible by said view.
Or you could use a cleartool find -cview, in order to limit the results to what you view is able to select and see.
I can compare two files in Winmerge by triggering a comparison on the command line with a command similar to:
WinMergeU C:\file1.txt C:\file2.txt
I can query a list of files with particular properties in clearcase with a clearcase query similar to:
Y:\VOB_A>cleartool find . -type l -exec "cleartool describe -fmt "%n %[slink_text]Tp\n\n\" \"%CLEARCASE_PN%\""
.\Directory\createsymlink.txt -->..\..\VOB_B\SymlinkFolder\createsymlink.txt
What I want is to generate a set of clearcase query results that can then be used as input to winmerge (ie generate a bunch of diff commands on checkins fulfilling a certain criteria like user or day).
How can I write a clearcase query to get a list of file elements (referable in clearcase ie winmerge could open the path to the version on a dynamic view), and get their corresponding previous version of the file?
The bit to format this to winmerge I imagine would look somewhat like this:
... describe -fmt "WinMergeU ...
One, you would need to generate the right full extended pathname for each file (one being the result of your query, one being the previous version of the one found by said query)
Two, you need to do so in a dynamic view (in order to access to any version though the extended path name of the file.
Once your query gives you a version, you can ask, with a cleartool descr -fmt "%PSn" (see fmt_ccase man page), for the previous version and add that to your result file.
Trying to do it all in one pass (find + predecessor version + WinMerge call) seems too complicated.
In my current working environment, I make use of eclipsed files extensively for testing purposes. When it comes time to formalize things, I have a script which generates a diff by comparing the file with a backup saved by my eclipse script.
I'd like to be able to work without the backup of the original file; is there any way I can retrieve the current version of the file that I can pass to diff? Even though the file is view-private, I see I can enter foo##/ and see a list of versions, but I'm not sure how to find which version is the latest. Everything I've tried using cleartool ls or describe with the file name tells me that it's not a VOB object (which is true, although cleartool ls does show it as eclipsed, so it must know, somehow, that there is an element there)
Thanks
Eclipsed file means dynamic view.
The simplest solution would to make a second dynamic view based on the same config spec.
Considering how cheap and quick those views are, this isn't an issue.
On that second dynamic view, you can do a
cleartool descr -fmt "%Xn" /path/to/element
In order to get the extended pathname of the file (see fmt_ccase for more on the %Xn syntax).
So I'm writing a script at work where I have to go through all the projects in a ClearCase vob, look for a file and parse some info from said file.
Naturally, I wouldn't want to load every single project so I'm using cleartool to retrieve the unloaded files.
First, I'm using the find command to locate the files. This was my first attempt:
root>cleartool find C:/viewpath -name file.txt -version "lbtype(Version-label)" -print -nr
Viewpath is the path to the project where I'm currently looking for the file. The file I'm looking for is file.txt on the version specified by Version-label.
This gave me no result whatsoever, even though I knew file.txt existed on that version.
I figured out it was looking through an old version of the directory, the latest on the main-branch, which was before file.txt was added to the directory. I tried this instead:
root>cleartool find C:/viewpath##/Version-label -name file.txt -version "lbtype(Version-label)" -print -nr
And got this result, which was what I was looking for
C:/viewpath\file.txt##\main\branch\41
So now that I knew where I could find the file I tried to get it.
root>cleartool get -to savepath C:/viewpath\file.txt##\main\branch\41
Which gave me this result
cleartool: Error: "C:/viewpath\file.txt##\main\branch\41" does not exist, or is not a ClearCase version, or is a checked out version which was removed.
Also tried
root>cleartool get -to savepath C:/viewpath\file.txt##/Version-label
With the same result
I can get files added to the directory when it was still on the main-branch, so it is still searching through the directory on the main-branch, where file.txt is nowhere to be found.
How do I tell it to look through a version of the directory from after it was branched from main?
I would really recommend for you to try those same commands in a dynamic view.
As illustrated here, a dynamic view gives you access to extended path (the file##/branch/version syntax), which means command like get will work.
You have in this question an example of search (cleartool find) using extended paths.
As explained in "In ClearCase, how can I view old version of a file in a static view, from the command line?", you can browse (as in 'change directory to') the various extended paths of a file in a dynamic view.
Because ClearCase updates directory version numbers when files inside are created, our config-spec generating script is failing (details omitted).
So, as an example, given a file such as "/proj/src/scripts/build.sh##/main/branch42/3", how can we determine the latest version of the scripts directory that contains that version of the build.sh file.
Note: we're looking for a unix command-line solution that can be scripted.
If you do a ls /proj/src/scripts##/main/branch42/*/build.sh/main/branch42/3 you should get a list of all versions of the scripts directory that contain version .../3 of build.sh. Then you should be able to pick out the latest of those.
The above is probably not a fool proof approach, so you might try something more like
cleartool find /proj/src/scripts --allversions --nonvisible -name build.sh -version 'brtype(branch42) && version(3)' -print
(I no longer have a clearcase environment to test in, so the above is from memory and is not an accurate command)
Another approach is to:
set a label on the right version of the build.sh script and its directory (you can move that label when needed)
have a second dynamic view always configured to select that label
element * SCRIPT_LABEL
element /proj/... .../branch42/LATEST
That way, you simply read the information you need from that second dynamic view.