ClearCase Vs HG

[Michael P. Soulier]

On 21/04/07 Georg Lohrer said:

> That depends on the focus. I'm using ClearCase since about eight years
> in a multi-sited project relating to hundreds of developers. ClearCase
> is designed for such big projects. Yes, it does not scale very well on
> its VOB (something like the repository) servers and you need lots of
> cpu-power to serve the user-views to these VOB's.
> BUT, you get support for something like configuration management in a
> multi-sited project. ClearCase simplifies heavy loads of builds and
> rebuilds as you have it big projects with internal and external
> deliveries, tons of milestones and tight production schedules. You, of
> course, need separated ClearCase-admins doing the maintenance and also
> of course reserve some really big servers and file storages for this
> version management system.

It always amazes me that people refer to ClearCase as supporting multi-site.
When I worked for Nortel, we had a proprietary version control system
(unfortunately it remained so) that handled multi-site development in ways
that ClearCase can still only dream of doing. Rational's idea of multi-site
was to have a stream per region, with some poor schmuck given the job of
"integration prime", sitting in diffmerge all day pulling in patches. Nothing
like paying a guy $70000 a year to run diffmerge. 

> On the other side I'm meanwhile using mercurial for my own internal
> project demands. As just made, I wanted to refactor a three year old
> tool. To not waste the ClearCase-VOB with my tries and errors, I
> checkedout the subproject, made my 'hg init; hg add' and started
> working. As I have finished after a few weeks, I checked in the changes
> into the VOB again. So, I use ClearCase for the official product
> deliveries, official bug-fixes and ClearCase branches to support changes
> to coworkers. All internal stuff will be done by the handsome mercurial.
> 
> So, comparing ClearCase with systems like git, cvs, mercurial, svn, etc.
> is like comparing an aeroplane with a train or truck. Both of them will
> transport goods from A to B, but with really different demands and requests.

I would argue that comparing them to ClearCase is like comparing a hybrid
economy car to a gas-guzzling SUV. They'll both get you there, but one is
really slow and expensive, and bad for the environment. The SUV has special
capabililties that people tout, like the ability to go offroad, but typically
never use. 

Mind you, SUVs are simple to drive. ClearCase on the command-line on unix
gives command-line interfaces a bad name. 

Mike
-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca>
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It
takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite
direction." --Albert Einstein
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