Comparison with Clearcase Lite

[St...@uk.delarue.com]

Hello all,

I'm 2/3 of the way through implementing SVN as our version control
system, but have suddenly been told that there is a move to consider
using Clearcase Lite instead.

I'm not familiar with this product, but if anyone has experience, or can
offer help with a comparison and ammunition for SVM advocacy, I'd much
appreciate it.

In my implementation we have two large development teams and a smaller
sysadmin team, and a very large repository of small, fast changing code.
We don't have any particular requirements which would be described as
unusual, so I really can't see what is driving the suggestion not to use
SVN, unless it is mistrust of OSS.

Any help much appreciated.

S.

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Re: Comparison with Clearcase Lite

[Ted Dennison <de...@ssd.fsi.com>]

Steve.Nelson@uk.delarue.com wrote:
> I'm not familiar with this product, but if anyone has experience, or can
> offer help with a comparison and ammunition for SVM advocacy, I'd much
> appreciate it.
>   
I don't see a torrent of useful info here, so I'll tell you what little 
I know, even though its probably dated.

I worked on a project that used ClearCase about 5 years ago. I'm 
unfamiliar with the "lite" version. The main drawbacks with it that I 
remember centered around the way it implemented its repository. 
ClearCase essentially takes over a partition on a hard drive with its 
own filesystem. Its a neat idea, but it causes problems. For instance, a 
lot of standard OS tools (eg: backup software) don't work properly with 
it. Mass operations on files from the ClearCase filesystem (eg: large 
checkins) would often fail with some bogus file permission error partway 
through, and had to be redone with the successful operations edited out 
somehow (process iterated until everything is taken care of). Writing 
scripts to detect and handle this is a nice little exercise in Computer 
Science, but I suspect most managers would rather their developers spend 
their time on other things. Our repository would periodically (6 months 
to a year I think) get hosed to the point where our ClearCase Admin had 
to take it down and repair it, so it wasn't exactly a paragon of 
reliability.

It wasn't easy to figure out how to administer. We had the best senior 
engineer in the company on this task; a guy with an EE degree from MIT. 
He had to go off to a Rational training course to learn how to do the 
Admin stuff. He couldn't figure out how to do it without the training. 
Being a mere mortal with no classes myself, I could barely manage to 
figure out to install and license the dang thing. I have done stuff like 
build the svn API from its directions, which requires downloading 
several ancillary packages and following their directions, so I'm not a 
total moron either (OK, my wife might disagree...).

As a user I actually liked ClearCase. However, it was massively 
expensive, which is why we eventually switched to SourceSafe. Presumably 
"Lite" is priced better.

While looking for information on this "Lite" thing, I found a comparison 
thread on the perforce mailing list. Perhaps it will help some:
http://maillist.perforce.com/pipermail/perforce-user/2001-January/thread.html#5234

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RE: Re: Comparison with Clearcase Lite

["Reedick, Andrew" <An...@BellSouth.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert P. J. Day [mailto:rpjday@mindspring.com] 
> Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 5:08 AM
> To: Steve.Nelson@uk.delarue.com
> Cc: users@subversion.tigris.org
> Subject: Re: Comparison with Clearcase Lite
> 
> On Fri, 6 Oct 2006, Steve.Nelson@uk.delarue.com wrote:
> 
> > ... so I really can't see what is driving the suggestion not to use
> > SVN, unless it is mistrust of OSS.
> 
> because, as we all know, expensive, proprietary, closed-source,
> black-box software that handcuffs you into vendor "lock-in" for which
> those vendors are rarely accountable is clearly a superior business
> decision in the long run.
> 
> </sarcasm>
> 

<cough>
	ClearCase has merge tracking.  And true renames.  And dynamic
views (well not CC Lite.)  And build and audit tools (well not CC Lite.)
And prettier merge tools.  And directories are first class objects.  And
has functional symlinks that work on Unix and Windows.  And lazy
branching.  CC has client side triggers, which allows for greater
customization/control on a coporate LAN.  CC also comes with an out of
the box process (UCM.)
</cough>

	OTOH, Svn working copies are much, much better than CC snapshot
views.  Svn is much cheaper in terms of $$.  Svn's labeling is several
orders of magnitudes faster than CC.  CC is fatally allergic to latency,
so WANs and world-wide use isn't practical unless you pay big bucks for
Multi-Site.  CC doesn't have atomic commits.  Svn requires less
horsepower.

	SVN automatically handles Evil Twins, whereas an Evil Twin
prevention trigger in CC is a good idea.  Which isn't to imply that
automatically resolving Evil Twins is a good thing all the time.  More
of a tradeoff/design decision.

	ClearCase is also integrated with ClearQuest (change management
tool) which may or may not be a good thing depending on your definition
of 'integration', and your views on 'vendor-lock-in' versus
'integration-that-works-out-of-the-box-to-support-an-out-of-the-box-comm
on-process.'

	SVN is still young.  Until 1.4.0 finally came out, I dreaded
merges because of the 'delete + add' breaks commits bug.  And we all
remember the joy of wedged databases.  SVN is getting better, but it's
not the best (merge tracking, merge tracking, merge tracking...)

	
P.S.  Spouting generic anti-corporation cliches isn't considered
sarcasm.  Please search on 'underpants gnomes'.


P.P.S  The original poster should try the clearcase forum on
www.cmcrossroads.com or try the cciug mailing (clearcase international
users group) Try cciug@lists.ca.ibm.com or hit IBM-Rational's website to
join.  My CC experience stops at CC 6.0, and CC 7.0 has come out
somewhat recently.


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Re: Comparison with Clearcase Lite

["Robert P. J. Day" <rp...@mindspring.com>]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2006, Steve.Nelson@uk.delarue.com wrote:

> ... so I really can't see what is driving the suggestion not to use
> SVN, unless it is mistrust of OSS.

because, as we all know, expensive, proprietary, closed-source,
black-box software that handcuffs you into vendor "lock-in" for which
those vendors are rarely accountable is clearly a superior business
decision in the long run.

</sarcasm>

rday

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