Keep Alive

All our source code is managed by Rational Clearcase. This tool is a little more complicated than other packages I have worked with. But no big deal. We set up multiple "views" per developer to work with different source code repositories and versions.

Some time in the last year, our company's system administration group implemented a new policy on views:
  1. Views not used in 30 days are made unavailable
  2. Views not used in 60 days are deleted

I can understand the rationale (no pun) of this policy. The administrators are tired of having lots of unused views taking up resources. Fine with me. But my problems started when I needed some infrequently used views. Since they were not accessed in a while they did not initially work. I tried to recreate them, but all I get are errors. WTF?

After submitting a system administration trouble ticket, and escalating the issue up the management chain, I got a little help. Apparently the automatic view deletion script is buggy. They left my retired views in a permanently unusable state. Great.

Here is my plan to combat this unfortunate set of circumstances: Write a program to make sure none of my views get stale. I am a programmer after all. Muhahaha. I bet the other guys on the development team will find my prog handy. I shall call it "Keep Alive".