What's the "proper" way to delete files from a ClearCase snapshot?

Question

When I delete a file from my snapshot view, the next time I look at the snapshot in ClearCase Explorer, it shows the "??" checked-out-but-removed icon. When I run "Find Modified Files" on the snapshot, the deleted files aren't shown. Running "Update View" on the snapshot causes ClearCase to re-copy the missing files back into my view.

What I want to happen is this: when I delete a file from my snapshot, and do an update, the file should be deleted from the view, just as if I had deleted it through ClearCase from a dynamic view. What's the best way to accomplish this?

I would prefer to avoid a lot of customization of my ClearCase environment. If there's a "standard" way to do this, I'd like to try that. If cleartool can show me search results for all files that fit this bill, that will be good enough for my purposes.

Anastomose

Answer 1

If you delete the file from the ClearCase Explorer, you shouldn't have any issue: it will

• checkout the parent directory
• rmname the file
• checkin the parent directory

But if you do it directly from a shell or a Windows Explorer, then ClearCase won't be informed of the operation, hence the "??" checked-out-but-removed status.

With a dynamic view, you cannot remove a file without ClearCase knowing about it, since a dynamic view is an encapsulation of the file system managed entirely by ClearCase.

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Now let's suppose you have deleted a bunch of check-out files directly from the native filesystem (not from the ClearCase Explorer or an IDE with a ClearCase plugin), and that you want those files to stay deleted!

Then a way to reconcile the two status would be to:

• cleartool update . (at the root directory of the snapshot view)
• parse the generated ".updt" file and for each checked-out file, rmname it (like in this article)

Woodberry

Thanks! I'll give this a try next time I go to delete something from my snapshot – Anastomose

@RMorissey: by the way, to delete a file, you shouldn't checkout it. – Woodberry

I didn't check anything out. It registered as "checked out" when I updated the snapshot, after deleting it from the snapshot directory in my local filesystem. – Anastomose

For the record, for others who try this technique: this method actually re-introduces all of the deleted files into the snapshot. I then had to go through the update log in a text editor, and check all the files marked "updated" to see if they were files that I had deleted. I delete each such file from the snapshot view through ClearCase Explorer. Very ungainly, but it solves the problem. – Anastomose