5.3 Selecting Activities

After you start the deliver operation and, optionally, specify the target, ClearCase opens another Deliver Preview dialog box to display the activities in your development stream that have never been delivered or that include versions created since the last deliver operation (Figure 20).

Figure 20 Undelivered Activities

The Delivering to Target box shows the target context of your delivery.

You can select all activities in the dialog box or a subset. If you select a subset of the activities, ClearCase checks for dependencies between versions in the change sets before continuing the operation. If your selection does not meet dependency requirements, ClearCase prompts you to change your selection.

To see an activity's change set, select the activity, click Properties, and click the Change Set tab in the Properties dialog box.

Controlling Merge Behavior

ClearCase tries to do the merge automatically. However, you often want to perform other operations before the automatic merge or know whether a file will cause merge problems. To handle any such needs, in the Deliver from Stream Preview dialog box, select Pause before merging files. If you select this option, the merge operation stops after it identifies the versions that require merging, checks out all versions, and performs all directory merges. You can then perform any operations related to the merge. When you are finished, continue the deliver operation (see To Stop and Resume the Deliver Operation).

Activity Dependencies in the Deliver Operation

For any given element in an activity's change set, you must deliver all versions in your stream in the range between the version in the change set and either the version most recently delivered or the version in the stream's foundation baseline (whichever is later). For example, in Figure 21, because version 3 of prog.c was delivered in a previous deliver operation, the dependencies between Activities B and C, which contain versions of prog.c, are as follows:

• You can deliver Activity B without delivering Activity C.

• To deliver Activity C, which contains version 6, you must also deliver Activity B, which contains the versions between 6 and the most recent delivery of prog.c.

• Because Activity B also contains versions of lib.c, you may be required to deliver other activities to satisfy dependencies for lib.c. For example, if Activity D (not shown in Figure 21) contained an undelivered version 6 of lib.c, delivering Activity B would require you to deliver Activity D as well.

Figure 21 Activity Dependencies