Teamcity and ClearCase

Teamcity has a known problem with requiring sequential version numbering for the files and directories it tracks.

The problem was exposed here when a developer removed the latest version of a directory and created a new version. The developer removed version 4. The recreated version became version 5! Teamcity knew the latest version of the directory ought to be version 4 and was very upset that it was missing. The continuous integration suddenly wasn't continuously integrating.

Now, some might argue the problem was with ClearCase for not assigning the new version the same version number as the removed version. However, I do not. ClearCase is using the same mechanism when the removed version is the latest version as when the version being removed is in the middle of the version tree.

Anyway, the resolution was pretty straightforward, if not pretty.

checkout the parent directory
checkout the "broken directory", we'll call it dirent1
move all files out of dirent1, i.e. cleartool mv * ..
checkin dirent1
cleartool rmname dirent1
create new directory with same name as dirent1
move files needed for version 1 into dirent1
checkin dirent1
checkout dirent1
move files needed for version 2 into dirent1
checkin dirent1
checkout dirent1
move files needed for version 3 into dirent1
checkin dirent1
checkout dirent1
move all remaining files in dirent1
checkin dirent1
checkin parent directory

We ended up with a version 3 on your parent directory and a dirent1 directory with 4 versions.

Some build labels also had to be manually re-assigned to appropriate versions, but luckily not that many.