A.3 Disconnecting the View

How you disconnect the view depends on which hardware configuration you use. This section describes disconnecting the view for the following hardware configurations:

• View on a laptop

• View on a removable storage device

• View Copied to a storage device

Hardware Configuration: View on a Laptop

If the view is located on a laptop, you must deactivate the ClearCase integrations with Windows Explorer and other developer tools before you disconnect the view. Most ClearCase operations communicate with various ClearCase servers. Even if you install view server software on your host, almost any time you start a ClearCase operation (even an operation as simple as displaying the ClearCase shortcut menu in Windows Explorer), your host must connect to the ClearCase license server. The ClearCase integration with Microsoft Visual Studio attempts to connect to the license server periodically. If you are disconnected from the network, the application that attempts to connect to the ClearCase license server locks for several seconds until it returns an error message. Although the application doesn't fail, such interruptions are unnecessary.

To Deactivate ClearCase Integrations

1. In Control Panel, click ClearCase.

2. Click the Options tab and clear the Connect to network for ClearCase operations check box.

3. Disconnect the laptop from the network.

Deactivating the integrations removes ClearCase commands from the Windows Explorer shortcut menus.

Hardware Configuration: View on a Removable Storage Device

If the view is located on a removable storage device, disconnect the removable storage device from the network computer and reconnect the media to the remote computer.

Hardware Configuration: View Copied to a Storage Device

If you do not have a storage device with satisfactory read/write performance, use the xcopy command to copy files from your view to the storage media and from the storage media to the remote computer as follows

xcopy path\snapshot-view-directory destination [ /D [:m-d-y] | /M ] /S /K /R

For example, xcopy c:\Library\pat_v1.4_cropcircle e:\temp /D /S /K /R

The command options accomplish the following:

• The /D option instructs xcopy to copy only the files that have changed, which is useful if you frequently alternate between the network computer and the nonnetwork computer. Use /D if you configured the Update Tool to set the time stamp of updated files to the time at which the files are loaded into the view. You can view or change the Update Tool's time stamp option on the Advanced tab of the Start Update dialog box. For more information, refer to Step #3 of Updating the View.

If you set the Update Tool to create time stamps based on the version-creation time, consider using the /M option, which causes xcopy to copy the files with the archive attribute set. The /M option is less reliable than the /D option, because some applications alter the archive attribute without writing the file.

• The /S option instructs xcopy to copy all subdirectories of the snapshot view.

• The /K option keeps the read-only file attribute as established by ClearCase.

• The /R option allows xcopy to overwrite read-only files.