Adding ClearCase commands to Visual Studio context menu

If you are using Visual Studio and clearcase this is really useful. This puts clearcase functions like opening the version tree into the menu when you right click on a file in solution explorer.

1. The following link shows you how to add new menu items to the context menu when you select file in the solution explorer:

http://www.sharpregion.com/blog/?p=105&cpage=1

2 . Just add the following bit of code to the module ContextCommads or download the full file from here:




3. Now Repeat steps 7 to 9 from the afore mentioned link Extending the Visual-Studio Context-Menu for the following three subs :

VersionTree - this opens up the clearcase version tree for the selected file
HijackFileCommand - hjacks the selected file (makes it writeable)
ClearCaseAnnotateCommand - calls the clearcase annotate command to show who and when each change was made on the selected file

Thats it. Now right click on a file and you will have these options available

Clearcase update from command line showing dialog and windows

If you like doing things from the command line but you want the update progress bar , etc to pop up, then this is quite useful.

c:
cd "C:\Program Files\Rational\ClearCase\bin"
"clearviewupdate" -quick -window 1f00f4 -windowmsg c14e -ws "Path Here"

If you don't want the update dialog to pop up you can use:

cleartool update "Path Here"

Use Beyond Compare in ClearCase

If you use any kind of source control system, one of the things you need to do is compare differences or "do diffs" or different versions of a file. However the the compare tool in clearcase is crap.

Beyond Compare is probably the the best file (and folder) comparison I have come across. It can even compare zip files.

If you are tired of using the shitty compare tool that is a default in clearcase there is indeed a way to switch this to use beyond compare instead

1. Go into the "C:\Program Files\Rational\ClearCase\lib\mgrs" directory.

2. Create a backup of the file named "map".

3. Edit "map" and change the line:

text_file_delta  xcompare   ..\..\bin\cleardiffmrg.exe

to:

text_file_delta  xcompare   C:\Progra~1\Beyond~1\bc2.exe

Thats it, next time you compare two versions of a file in the version tree or you compare with previous version, beyond compare will be used instead.

Alternately if you want to use winmerge (which is opensource and free) , then it gives you an option to replace the default viewer when you install it.