The CM Bridge Quick Start Guide

$/!\$ Caution: Before setting up bridges for production systems, please refer to the CM Bridge Administration Guide for important information on planning and setting up bridges. It is strongly recommended that you test your bridge setup in a test environment before applying bridges to a production environment to ensure that the correct result is achieved.

Introduction

Welcome to Clearvision's CM Bridge: Integrating Subversion, Git and ClearCase.

System Diagram

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites need to be in place before you can start using CM Bridge.

ClearCase has been installed and relevant VOBs and views have been mounted on the CM Bridge server host.
Subversion client software has been installed on the CM Bridge server host.
Git client software has been installed on the CM Bridge server host.
The Subversion server is up and running.

License

Evaluation License

Evaluation licenses can be requested from the clearvision website: http://www.clearvision-cm.com

A link to the license request form for a product can be found on the product's download page. To request a license we need some information about the machine that you will be running the server on. To get this information, you can run the get_license_info program on the machine you want to use as the server (the get_license_info program can be found within the tools directory of the installation directory). This will retrieve and present system information from the machine.

Once the license request form has been completed and submitted, an email will be sent to the registered email address containing the license infomation. This information will need to be inserted into the server config file.

Note that this license will only work on a particular server machine, on a particular port, and will allow a maximum number of users. The license is time-limited so it is recommended that Evaluation licenses are not requested until needed.

Full License

Once a license has been purchased, you will receive an email containing a link to the online full license generator. A similar form will need to be filled in as for an evaluation license. Once the form has been completed and confirmed a full license will be emailed. Any evaluation license details in the config file will need to be replaced by the full license.

Licenses are tied to the hardware as well as the IP address of the machine used for the server. It is therefore necessary to ensure these details will not change as this will leave the license invalid.

CM Bridge Installation

The installation consists of: the CM Bridge server and Webadmin Server and the ClearCase attribute type creation.

It is recommended to install and run the CM Bridge server and the Webadmin server under the same user id. If you do need to use different user id's, then please make sure file permissions are set appropriately on the workspace directory, in particular the webadmin subdirectory and the files it contains.

Start by unpacking the zip file on the machine to be used as the CM Bridge server host. Note that files can be extracted in any location. However, recommended locations are C:\Program Files on Windows and /opt on Linux hosts. The following directory structure will be created:

/opt/Clearvision/cc2x/
- admin
- docs
- media
- server
- templates
- tools
On Linux, adjust permissions using chmod -R 755 Clearvision or chmod -R a+x Clearvision

CM Bridge Webadmin Server

The Webadmin server must be configured and started before the CM Bridge server is started. This will create and configure important data structures required for the CM Bridge server.

Edit Clearvision/cc2x/server/cc2x_server.cfg using a suitable text editor (avoid Notepad or MS Word as these may introduce unwanted characters, corrupting config files) and configure the following parameters:

[General]
; Staging area for cc2x information
workspace=/opt/Clearvision/cc2x/workspace

; Email server information to allow the CM Bridge to send email notifications on problems
smtp_host=mail.server.com
smtp_username=user
smtp_password=password
from_address=user@localhost

[License]
company_name=Your Company Plc
licence_email=admin@yourcompany.com
expiry_date=2008-12-31
bridges=999
allow_svn_bridges=1
allow_git_bridges=1
license_key=PLEASE_ADD_YOUR_LICENCE_key_HERE
license_certificate=PLEASE_ADD_YOUR_LICENCE_certificate_HERE

[Server]
; Define this CM Bridge server machine as per your license
server_ip=192.168.1.2

[WebAdmin]
; Port for webadmin server
webadmin_port=8181

The License and Server sections must match the licence received from Clearvision. Any changes to the License or Server section will invalidate your licence.

It is strongly recommended that the staging area defined as the CM Bridge workspace in the config file points to a local file system and not a network drive. Also, on older Windows systems, if the workspace lives on a FAT file system, you will need share.exe running for file locking to work correctly.

Please note that for the Webadmin server to operate correctly, you currently need to change your current working directory to the location of the Webadmin server executable and start the server from there. You will also need to point to the location of the config file using the -f option:-

cd /opt/Clearvision/cc2x/admin
./cc2x_webadmin -f ../server/cc2x_server.cfg

CM Bridge Server

If you have followed the instructions above, you will already have installed the CM Bridge server. Please now start the server as follows:-

cd /opt/Clearvision/cc2x/server
./cc2x_server -f ./cc2x_server.cfg

The CM Bridge server and Webadmin server must point to the same config file to ensure that they are both configured to use the same workspace. It is via the workspace directory configured in the config file that the CM Bridge server and Webadmin server exchange information.

Subversion Hooks

$/!\$ Note: From CM Bridge version 2.0 onwards, Subversion hooks are no longer required

ClearCase Attribute Creation

The CM Bridge requires a special attribute type to exist for all ClearCase vobs being bridged. Please create the attribute type by changing your current working directory into the vob directory under a suitable view and run the following command:-

cleartool mkattype -vtype integer clearvision_cc2x

Configure Bridges

Add a new bridge by filling out the form at the bottom of the screen. A bridge bridges between an existing Subversion/Git repository location and an existing directory inside a view.

If you are setting up multiple bridges for the same VOB/repository, please make sure you do not have any overlaps been bridges.

For details on bridge configuration, please refer to the CM Bridge Administration Guide.