In article <vg3obb899rk....@coffee.modeemi.fi>, Anssi Saari <a...@sci.fi> wrote:
> I have some experience with ClearCase. I don't know why anyone would buy > it since it's bloated and slow and hard to use and likes to take over > your computer. ClearCase was the right solution to certain specific problems which existed 20 years ago. It does have a couple of cool features. 1) Every revision of every file exists simultaneously in the file system namespace (CC exports its repo as a quasi-NFS file system). That means you can look at every revision with all your normal command-line tools (diff, grep, whatever). 2) It ships with an integrated build tool which can automatically learn your dependency graph. This is paired with a feature called "winking in". Let's say I'm building a humungous C++ project which takes hours to compile. And I'm part of a team of 50 developers, all working on the same code. If I need foo.o, and some other developer has already compiled a foo.o with exactly the same dependency graph (including what versions of the toolchain and option flags), I just instantly and transparently get a copy of their file instead of having to build it myself. This can potentially save a huge amount of build time. All that being said, it is, as Anssi points out, a horrible, bloated, overpriced, complicated mess which requires teams of specially trained ClearCase admins to run. In other words, it's exactly the sort of thing big, stupid, Fortune-500 companies buy because the IBM salesperson plays golf with the CIO. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
