About View Profiles

 Technote (FAQ)

Question

What are View Profiles and how are they used in IBM® Rational® ClearCase®? This technote provides an overview of the ClearCase View Profile functionality on Microsoft® Windows®.

Answer

---

---

About View Profiles

Base ClearCase includes a set of features called view profiles, which you can use to automate much of the work flow required to set up and maintain your team’s shared ClearCase configuration.

• The view profile feature set only exists on Microsoft Windows.
• There are no equivalent features for view profiles on UNIX® or Linux®.
• The view profile feature set does not exist on ClearCase LT® (CCLT).

Note: The Unified Change Management (UCM) process provides a more complete solution for organizing software development teams and has replaced all of the view profile functionality. Review Appendix A in the Managing Software Projects guide for information on moving from view profiles to UCM.

---

Enabling View Profiles

The first thing that needs to be established is the share to which the view profiles will be stored for all clients to use. The Windows share must be accessible to all ClearCase users.

Once the share is created, you can activate View Profiles on the clients.

1. Open the ClearCase Properties control panel applet (Click Start > Run type cc.cpl)
2. Click on the Options tab.
3. Check the Use view profiles for creating views radio button
4. Enter the path the Windows share where the view profiles will be stored.
5. Click OK

---

Creating View Profiles

1. Open the View Profile Explorer to create and work with the view profiles.
   
   
   
   You can access the View Profile Explorer as follows:
   
   • Start > Run type clearprojtool
     Note: This command only works if View Profiles are enabled in the ClearCase control panel applet.
     
     
   • From the GUI through the ClearCase Home Base on the Branches tab
     
     
     
     Note: Prior to enabling View Profiles, if you used the ClearCase Home Base GUI, you may have noticed that there was not a Branches tab and if there was, only the Merge Manager appeared. After enabling View Profiles, there will be new options available.
     
     Example before View Profiles were enabled:
     
     
     
     
2. Once the View Profile Explorer is open, create a view profile.
   
   
   
   
   Fill in the fields for Step 1 and click Next
   
   
   
   
   Select the VOB to be worked on for the project along with any related AdminVOB and click Next
   
   
   
   
   Choose the branching strategy to deploy. Click Next
   
   Note: This example will work on a branch other than main.
   
   
   
   
   Choose the baseline label (checkpoint) to start from and click Next
   
   Note: The project needs to be set up prior to configuring the view profile that includes a labeled set of elements to start from. In this example, the INITIAL label has been applied within the VOB \import.
   
   
   
   
   Use an existing branch or create a new branch type to represent the shared location (integration branch) for the profile to merge to and click Next
   
   
   
   
   Update the diagram (if needed) which helps represents the work flow of the view profile (visually). When complete, click Next
   
   
   
   

   ---

   
   Example modification:
   
   Click Tool Palette
   
   
   
   
   

   ---

   
   
   Review the specifications of the view profile (including the config spec) and click Finish
   
   Note: To see how to predefine load rules for snapshot views review for more details.
   
   
   
   
   You will now see the first (of many) View Profiles in the list
   
   

---

Using View Profiles

Everything else you need to know about View Profiles can be found in the on-line Help

Click Help > Using View Profile Explorer

---

FAQs

• Why can't the config_spec for a view be edited when the view is associated with a view profile?
  
  This is by design. The only changes permitted fall in the middle of the config spec, as identified below:
  
  # [CC_PROJECT - ClearCase View Profile Information
  #               Name - \ClearCase View Profiles\integ_branch
  #               ID - c44d6ae3-4b77-25f7-8ba8-1235e1474da 0.2
  #
  element * CHECKEDOUT
  #
  #             Any modifications to this config spec should
  #             be made following this comment.
  # CC_PROJECT]
  
  <-------In this section you can add additional rules
  
  # [CC_PROJECT - View Profile Config Spec
  #             Do not directly modify the text below, it has been
  #             automatically generated by the ClearCase View Profile Tool.
  
  element * ...\integration\LATEST
  element * REL1 -mkbranch integration
  element * \main\0 -mkbranch integration
  # CC_PROJECT]
  
  
• Why do I see the following error starting my view?
  
  Unable to perform view start-up operations related to the "view_tag" view's
  ClearCase View Profile association.
  Error 0x3e9 trying to mount VOB"\vob_tag"
  
  The error is generated because the VOB that was removed is referenced in the view profile. Open the View Profile Explorer and edit the associated view profile and remove the VOB from the current VOB list.