A while ago I had the pleasure of experiencing working with ClearCase, NOT!
I made a few notes on how it affected me and as far as I could tell, the team.
Not updating your own codebase often because
- update is damn slow
- risk of codebase not compiling after update as checked out/hijacked files are not updated
Lots of CruiseControl failures were due to
- accidental checkin files before they are complete when refactoring or creating new files
- newly created files not checked in
CruiseControl failures de-sensitised the team
- people stop caring/responding to build failures making CI less useful
- reduced team moral
The above issues are avoidable but:
- it is not suppose to be this hard
- workflow using ClearCase is not efficient and optimised for developers
- what are the benefits with keep using ClearCase that prevented the team from moving away from it?
Also some general issues with ClearCase
- it is not a tool that many people know and know it well to use it efficiently
- it is not a tool to attract/retain staff
- developers were just not happy using it