clearcase - Config specs and Load rules difference

Question

What is the difference between Config specs and Load rules in Clearcase?

Are both of them edited using "cleartool editcs -tag " command only?

Answer 1

A config spec is a collection of:

• selection rules (for selection the right versions)
• load rules (only for snapshot view) for loading into your "workspace" (the snapshot view) the files selected by... the selection rules just above!

You can edit both with ct edcs (just "ct edcs" if you are anywhere in a ClearCase view).

Of course, in a dynamic view, you will only edit selection rules, since there are no "load rules":
there is nothing to "load" on your disk, since the all point of dynamic view is network access to data (very quick, and dynamic as in "automatically refreshed" if the selection rule is on "LATEST" of a branch).

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Simple tricks with load rules:

a/ Use "/" even on windows
No need of load myVob: load /myVob works too

b/ Use them in combination with "cleaning selection rules":
a selection rule is a rule at the end (before the loading rules) which selections nothing

 element /myVob/* -none

Since other selection rules placed before that one does select several sub-directories, that last selection rules only means: "if it is not previously selected before, do NOT select it at all".

Consequence for a snapshot view?

Instead of writing:

load /myVob/a
load /myVob/b/b1
load /myVob/b/b2
# do not load /myVob/c
# do not load /myVob/d
load /myVob/e

(because you only want specific directories within /myVob), you can just write:

load /myVob

One simple load rule: it won't load what is not selected. and since "/myVob/c" or "/myVob/d" are not selected, they will not appear (even empty) on the disk within your snapshot view.