ClearCase: Is it possible to cancel checkouts not made from your own view?

Question

Can the project manager force cancellation of checkouts of files/directories made in any view/stream/project? How?

Answer 1

A ClearCase administrator can force all files of a given view to be considered as "not checked out" (which is the equivalent of canceling their checkout status), with cleartool rmview:

cleartool rmview -force -uuid (uuid_of_the_view) -vob \aVob

You can get the uuid by grepping the user in the output of:

cleartool descr -l vob:\aVob

See technote "Removing checked-out references of a view from a VOB".
It will work for any view (snapshot or dynamic views, base ClearCase or UCM views)

I would recommend limiting that command to a specific vob.
Anyway, that doesn't concern the Project manager unless he/she is also a ClearCase administrator (ie, he/she is in the same group than the ClearCase administrators group on Windows, or if he/she is root on Unix)

Regarding a cleartool unco (which you can attempt on a dynamic view only), keep in mind if will only work for:

• Version creator
• Element owner
• VOB owner
• root (UNIX and Linux)
• Member of the ClearCase administrators group (ClearCase on Windows)
• Local administrator of the ClearCase LT server host (ClearCase LT on Windows)

So, unless your project manager has created the Vob in which those checked out files are managed, he/she won't be able to undo checkout them.

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As commented below, all checkout files of the associated vob \avob are no longer considered checked out (their status is reset, not their modified content, which is untouched).

In order to restore those checked out files, a user can:

• for a snapshot view, list hijacked files (as in this technote)
• for a dynamic view list eclipsed files (see technote on eclipsed files)

Each filename found can be piped to a clearcase checkout command.

So restoring the checked out files is fairly easy for a given view and vob.