what has changed for a rebase?

Some new developers came to ask the question: "I did a rebase. But I could not see any rebase activities. Did the rebase successful? If so, what's changed after the rebase?"

These are valid questions. In fact, they are very good questions. Normally after a rebase, you will notice that there is a new activity with a title like "rebase ...". These activities contain the change set for the rebase operation. However, sometimes, the rebase operation does not generate the "rebase..." activity. That's when people come up with the questions.

A rebase operation changes the foundation baseline of the stream from the previous recommend baseline of the parent stream to the current one. If you do not change any file in the delta of the two baselines, i.e, you do not touch the same files as the recommended baseline, you will not get a rebase activity. However, your view will reflect the new version of the elements. When you check out the files in the future, they will be branched out from the new versions. If you have changed the files in the delta, ClearCase will do the merge for you, and you will see the rebase activity. From the version tree, a merge arrow will be drawn from the recommended version to your version.

Dynamic View == Always up-to-date?

You may think that a dynamic view of a stream will always reflect the LATEST version of elements in the stream. Well, you may be wrong.

If you find out that you are still looking at an older version in a view, while there are newer versions of the element in the stream, don't be surprise. This can happen. One possible reason is that the stream has more than one views. When you use one of the views to rebase the stream from its parent stream, the config spec (yes, a UCM view still has a config spec) has changed, while the other views still refer to the old foundation baseline.

....
element "[39730511c62311d9847000018376dd1b=\MidTier]/..." CBFE14.5_2008_01_14 -mkbranch CBFE14.5_LinkRemoval
....

To synchronize the view with the stream, you can click the "synchronize with stream" button in the view property page, or run "cleartool setcs -stream" in command line.

The ClearCase Eraser -- Versions Recorded in UCM Baseline

ClearCase UCM brings in more dependencies for the elements and ClearCase objects. It becomes harder to remove anything from ClearCase. Here in this blog shows how to remove a version that is "recorded in UCM baseline".

Before deleting the activity, we have to remove all the versions in the activity, -- if we do not want to move the versions to another activity.

$ cleartool lsact -l rebase.CBFE14.5_base.20071204.174114@/vobs/CBFEProjects
activity "rebase.CBFE14.5_base.20071204.174114"
04-Dec-07.17:39:26 by Qin (qinl.cbfedev@CBAD4-XCIDH3)
"Integration activity created by rebase on 12/4/2007 5:41:14 PM.
"
owner: qinl
group: cbfedev
stream: CBFE14.5_base.old@/vobs/CBFEProjects
title: rebase CBFE14.5_base on 12/4/2007 5:41:14 PM.
change set versions:
/vobs/MidTier/BaseUtil/src/com/cibc/evo/logging/CbfeDefaultLogger.java@@/main/Mainline_i/CBFE14.5_base/2
/vobs/MidTier/BaseUtil/src/.classpath@@/main/Mainline_i/CBFE14.5_i/CBFE14.5_base/2
/vobs/MidTier/BaseUtil/src/.project@@/main/Mainline_i/CBFE14.5_i/CBFE14.5_base/2

$ cleartool rmver -xbranch -xlabel -xattr -xhlink /vobs/MidTier/BaseUtil/src/com/cibc/evo/logging/CbfeDefaultLogger.java@@/main/Mainline_i/CBFE14.5_base/2
cleartool: Error: Cannot remove versions which are recorded in UCM baseline.
cleartool: Error: No versions of "/vobs/MidTier/BaseUtil/src/com/cibc/evo/logging/CbfeDefaultLogger.java" to remove.

$ cleartool lsbl -stream CBFE14.5_base.old@/vobs/CBFEProjects
04-Dec-07.13:23:05 CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538 HZ18 "CBFE14.5_2007_12_4"
stream: CBFE14.5_base.old@/vobs/CBFEProjects
component: MidTier@/vobs/CBFEProjects

$ cleartool rmbl CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538@/vobs/CBFEProjects
Remove baseline "CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538@/vobs/CBFEProjects"? [no] y
cleartool: Error: Cannot remove baseline that has been delivered.
cleartool: Error: Unable to remove baseline "CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538@/vobs/CBFEProjects".

$ cleartool desc -l baseline:CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538@/vobs/CBFEProjects
baseline "CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538"
created 04-Dec-07.13:23:05 by Zhao (HZ18.cbfedev@CBAD3-XCIDVQ)
"DOMDAM_base_class@\CBFEProjects"
owner: hz18
group: cbfedev
component: MidTier@/vobs/CBFEProjects
label status: Incrementally Labeled
change sets:
deliver.CBFE14.5_base_hz18.20071204.132426@/vobs/CBFEProjects
promotion level: INITIAL
depends on:
Attributes:
PromotionLevel = "INITIAL"
Hyperlinks:
BaselineLbtype@13505@/vobs/CBFEProjects -> lbtype:CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538@/vobs/MidTier
Integrate@13511@/vobs/CBFEProjects -> anyactivity:timeline071202.075859@/vobs/CBFEProjects

$ cleartool rmhlink Integrate@13511@/vobs/CBFEProjects
cleartool: Warning: Hyperlinks of type "hltype:Integrate@/vobs/CBFEProjects" are used to implement UCM and should not be directly manipulated unless directed by customer support.
cleartool: Warning: Hyperlinks of type "hltype:Integrate@/vobs/CBFEProjects" are used to implement UCM and should not be directly manipulated unless directed by customer support.
Removed hyperlink "Integrate@13511@/vobs/CBFEProjects".

$ cleartool rmbl CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538@/vobs/CBFEProjects
Remove baseline "CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538@/vobs/CBFEProjects"? [no] y
cleartool: Warning: Searching PVOBs for baselines that depend upon baseline "CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538". This may take a few minutes...

Removed baseline "CBFE14.5_2007_12_4.8538@/vobs/CBFEProjects".

$ cleartool rmver -xbranch -xlabel -xattr -xhlink /vobs/MidTier/BaseUtil/src/com/cibc/evo/logging/CbfeDefaultLogger.java@@/main/Mainline_i/CBFE14.5_base/2
Removing these versions of "/vobs/MidTier/BaseUtil/src/com/cibc/evo/logging/CbfeDefaultLogger.java":
/main/Mainline_i/CBFE14.5_base/2 (has: hyperlinks)
Remove versions? [no] y
Removed versions of "/vobs/MidTier/BaseUtil/src/com/cibc/evo/logging/CbfeDefaultLogger.java".

$ cleartool rmact rebase.CBFE14.5_base.20071204.174114@/vobs/CBFEProjects
Remove activity "activity:rebase.CBFE14.5_base.20071204.174114@/vobs/CBFEProjects"? [no] y
Removed activity "rebase.CBFE14.5_base.20071204.174114@/vobs/CBFEProjects".