Bridging the Divide: How DevOps Code ClearCase GitViews Empowers Developers with Git Integration

Git is a popular option for software development teams in the version control market, and today’s developers appreciate the option to use their preferred tools and IDEs. Organizations with mission-critical systems, however, often rely on enterprise-grade software configuration management tools like ClearCase for its robust capabilities in security, scale, process control, complex multi-component management and regulatory compliance. How can we reconcile some developers’ preference for Git with the enterprise's need for ClearCase? The answer is ClearCase GitViews.

What are ClearCase GitViews?

GitViews are a new type of ClearCase view, built on the proven technology of ClearCase snapshot views. They allow individual developers to leverage standard Git operations in their daily work while seamlessly integrating with ClearCase as the secure central repository for changes.

A Modern Workflow for the Developer

With GitViews, you can use any IDE (such as VS Code) that integrates with Git. Creating a new GitView also creates a server-side Git repository that the developer clones to their client. The new Git repository is populated with a single version of each file from the new snapshot view, which may include multiple source repositories (VOBs) .

Developers gain the freedom to:

• Work Locally and Privately: Use local version control in an isolated Git repository to track changes, create branches, and experiment without affecting the central ClearCase repository.

• Streamlined Integration: When ready, you use git commands to push changes to the server-side Git repository and then deliver them to the ClearCase integration stream.

• Familiar Conflict Resolution: The GitViews UI provides an interface for conflict resolution during deliver and rebase operations that is similar to existing ClearCase merge tools.

Maintaining ClearCase's Enterprise Power

While GitViews offers an alternate front-end experience, it is designed to ensure teams continue to benefit from ClearCase's unmatched enterprise capabilities, including:

• Scale and Performance: Support for large-scale parallel development, huge project sizes (one customer has over 60 million lines of code for a single application), and high-performance, instant-on workspaces.

• Complex Systems Management: Easy management of complex, multi-component projects, providing a single workspace for working on all components.

• Security and Compliance: A secure, centralized repository with fine-grained access control, a complete change audit trail, and support for regulatory compliance.

• Authoritative Build Auditing: Automatically generate detailed metadata and a complete Bill of Material for every build artifact.

• Automation: Extensive process automation and enforcement via triggers.

Crucially, ClearCase GitViews are an extension of snapshot views and are intended for individual use only. Coordination of changes from multiple developers still occurs within ClearCase, just as with existing views. This approach ensures that your mission-critical infrastructure remains protected and auditable.

Current supported project environments 

Using GitViews requires a server install and is currently supported on ClearCase Linux x86-based platforms. The current deliverable requires a UCM environment and each created GitView is attached to a UCM project. If you’d like to see support for additional use cases, either in UCM or base ClearCase, please let us know!