Creating a new subdirectory structure in ClearCase? - clearcase

Question

I'm a ClearCase newbie and up until now have been used to SVN. Therefore, I'm a bit confused on the steps I need to take to create a new directory structure containing multiple files to ClearCase.
So, say for example there is an existing directory structure within ClearCase as follows:
\ParentDirectory
\ChildDirectory1
\File1
\File2
\ChildDirectory2
\ChildDirectory3
\File1
\ChildDirectory4
If I want to add a new subdirectory to this structure, ChildDirectory5, which will contain a number of other files, how do I go about this? From what I have been reading, I will need to first of all check out the parent directory and then use the mkelem command to make each subdirectory and file.
However, I have already created the necessary files and directories on my local machine so I just need to check them into ClearCase somehow. With SVN, all I would've needed to do was copy the parent folder into a checked out repo and do an add & commit command sequence on it.

Answer 1

As explained in How can I use ClearCase to “add to source control …” recursively?, you have to use clearfsimport which does what you are saying (checkout the parent directories, mkelem for the elements)
clearfsimport -preview -rec -nset c:\sourceDir\ChildDirectory5 m:\MyView\MyVob\ParentDirectory
Note the :
-preview option: it will allow to check what would happen without actually doing anything.
'*' used only in Windows environment, in order to import the content of a directory
-nset option (see my previous answer about nset).
I would recommend dynamic view for those initialization phases where you need to import a lot of data: you can quickly see what your view looks like without making any update (like "without updating your workspace"):
ClearCase allows to access the data in two ways:
snapshot view (like a SVN workspace, except all the .svn are actually externalized in a view storage outside the workspace)
dynamic view: all your files are visible through the network (instant access/update)

Answer 2

I use a variant of this script (I call it "ctadd"):
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Getopt::Attrribute;
(our $nodo : Getopt(nodo));
(our $exclude_pat : Getopt(exclude_pat=s));
for my $i (#ARGV) {
if ($i =~ /\s/) {
warn "skipping file with spaces ($i)\n";
next;
}
chomp(my #files = `find $i -type f`);
#files = grep !/~$/, #files; # emacs backup files
#files = grep !/^\#/, #files; # emacs autosave files
if (defined($exclude_pat)) {
#files = grep !/$exclude_pat/, #files;
}
foreach (#files) {
warn "skipping files with spaces ($_)\n" if /\s/ ;
}
#files = grep !/\s/, #files;
foreach (#files) {
my $cmd = "cleartool mkelem -nc -mkp \"$_\"";
print STDERR "$cmd\n";
system($cmd) unless $nodo;
}
}
The -mkpath option of cleartool mkelem will automatically create and/or check out any needed directories.
For this script, -nodo will have it simply output the commands, and -exclude will allow you to specify a pattern for which any file that matches it will be excluded.
Note that Getopt::Attribute is not part of the standard Perl distribution, but it is available on a CPAN mirror near you.

Answer 3

You have to import your local directory structure. The command is clearfsimport.