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version-controlsybaseclearcasepowerbuilder

Is there anyone out there using Clear Case with Sybase Powerbuilder?


Word has come from upon high to standardize our SCM system. And upon the clay tablets was written Clear Case.

I am reaching out to anyone who is actually using this configuration - to get best practices, hints and tips, war stories, anything...

The Sybase Source Control newsgroup only gives back the sound of crickets.

We currently have a boatload of actively maintained Powerbuilder 11.5 and EAServer 5.5 systems - so version-ing at the PBL library file level is NOT an option.

And it will be a long, long time before we go to the newest version 12 - which removes the PBL file and uses text files and works as a Visual-Studio plug-in.


Solution

  • I've always used the following pattern

    _work.pbl _last_minute_changes.pbl 1.pbl 2.pbl 3.pbl ...

    I export the objects from 1,2,3... and check them into clearcase. I set up a nightly build using PowerGen to do a bootstrap import to a network share. I use a script to pull those pbl's down into my view. I check an object out of clearcase and import it into my _work.pbl. Make my changes, export it and check it into clearcase. A trigger then fires a CI build that imports the object into the _last_minute_changes.pbl and regenerates it against the previous nights pbl's and then archives it to a network share.

    I then refresh my view from the share using the script and delete the object from my work.pbl. When it comes time to deploy we run a script that takes the sync'd pbl's and turns them into pbd's.

    I used this process for a team of over 100+ powerbuilder developers in 4 states and it woked really well for us. Our application had over 12,000 objects and we never had any problems.