How to setup activity automatically for a view?

Question

In our build , we use to delete our view and create new view before build.

It was working without any issue in base clearcase.

But in UCM we face issues while check-out and check-in due to activity name has to be assigned every time.

Is it a good practice to create new activity whenever i build? [ But number of activities will be soon increased to enormous]

Is there any easy way to setup default activity automatically in UCM?

Has any body automated this in their build process? If so can you share link or something useful resource..

Answer 1

Use cleartool setact to set your activity.

setact/ivity [ –c/omment comment | –cfi/le pname | –cq/uery | –nc/omment ]
[ –vie/w view-tag ] { –none | activity-selector } 

You might need to unset the current activity first from your view:

Cleared current activity from view java_int.

cleartool setactivity -none

Then, Set an activity to be the current activity.

cleartool setactivity create_directories
Set activity "create_directories" in view "webo_integ".

See "Setting UCM activities" for more:

You can set only one activity per view at a time, and all checkouts in your view are associated with the currently set activity until you unset the activity or set another one.

cleartool setact -view <myViewTag> <anActiviyName>

(-view set before the activity name)

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Note that if you are changing the activity while you have pending checkouts, you will have a warning.

You usually associate activities to a development task instead of a build number.
Since you don't version what you are building (the executables), you don't have to make a new activity per build.

Answer 2

@Samselvaprabu , agreeing with VonC on other things and that activities are,at best, logical groupings of code/development tasks. For example 5 source code + 1 property files for resolving a QA defect.

Though when you ask how many activities ? there is no specific guideline which IBM provides (AFAIK) on this, but in my experience

1. A typical activity may not have too few, meaning 1,2 files or too many (say 15+) files.
2. An activity naming convention (though inconsistent when manual) would help. For example username_ShortDescreption/DefectID_date might help in organizing, sorting of activites when the need arises. And trust me, it will.
3. Obsoleting activities based on some criteria such as age (more than 1 month) is good for housekeeping.
4. An activity per build ?? - I would say this is subjective to how many times you build, how many artifacts go per build , how many view/developers you have and so on. You could have a build<>activity relationship which is 1<>n or n<>1 which is completely case-specific to your environment. That's the beauty and also the curse of UCM.

These suggestions are not exactly would you asked for but I feel this a a good time to give them as you are just starting with this complex, messy world called UCM :)