Modern development environment on dated RHEL

[guy keren]

Elazar Leibovich wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir at cohens.org.il 
> <mailto:tzafrir at cohens.org.il>> wrote:
> 
>      >
>      > 4. I'm not sure. It's problematic since ClearCase 6 is only
>     supported by IBM
>      > on RHEL 4.7, and we don't have new CC licenses.
> 
>     AHHH!
> 
>     Only RHEL4.7 is supported. However do you think "a completely modified
>     (in a non-reproducable way) RHEL 4.7" is supported?
> 
> Well, if I manage not to change glibc, how can it know I'm having (say) 
> a brand new KDE with some Qt IDE? Or that I'm using reasonably recent 
> version of mercurial version control (yes I'm using both an "agile" 
> version control which is more convenient to quickly keep many small 
> changes, and to search through history with, and I move "big" baselines 
> to the clearcase when I'm done). Or scons to build the release.
> I believe you can get a reasonably modern development environment to 
> live within the RHEL space. The only thing I fear is managing it.
> 
> 
>     I suspect a VM is the cheapest way.
> 
>     Is the problem only ClearCase itself, or the complete development
>     environment?
> 
> No, just Clearcase.
> 
> 
>     If only ClearCase: do you actually use it in the filesystem-like method?
> 
> Do you mean the MVFS? Yes we do, but I'm by no means a ClearCase expert, 
> so I'll be glad to hear of other methods.

clearcase has two major modes of operation. one of them allows you to 
see any changes made to the repositories instantly as they are made - 
this requires your development OS to be supported by clearcase. this 
form uses clearcase's kernel code to show you a virtual file system that 
takes its files from the clearcase repository on-the-fly.

the other reuires you to work like any other source control software - 
perform a "rebase" or "checkout" or other operations to see the changes 
made to the source. in this later case, you get copies of the code onto 
a normal file system.

in the later case, you can use clearcase on other systems, or 
alternatively, export the file system from a RHEL 4.7 system, via NFS - 
and so run the development tools on a different machine.

in the former case - i don't know if clearcase supports exporting its 
special file system via NFS to clients. if it does - this might give you 
the option of running the dev tools on a newer system, and only run the 
build operation on the RHEL 4.7 system.

--guy