Troubleshooting
Problem
This technote explains why Microsoft® Office documents which contain binary data cannot be merged in IBM® Rational® ClearCase® and provide workarounds to this issue.
Cause
The Rational ClearCase text file diff and merge tools will only able to compare and merge text files; binary files cannot be merged as detailed in technote 1149498.
The following Microsoft Office files contain binary data that the ClearCase diff-merge utility cannot process or combine correctly:
- Microsoft Word
Note: Using the ms_word type manager for Word documents will allow versions of Word to be merged. Change the element type of the Word documents to ms_word to take advantage of this feature. Review the ClearCase Command Reference Guide on the topic of chtype (cleartool man chtype) for more information.
- Microsoft Project
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft PowerPoint
Resolving The Problem
WORKAROUND:
A manual merge can be completed, which is essentially a copy operation where the to version is replaced by the from version, but their contents are not consolidated.
For more details on how to handle a binary merge in ClearCase see technote 1123371.
The merge functionality is discussed in IBM Rational ClearCase Rational Developing Software.
Documentation
- On-line documentation for ClearCase 7.0 and later can be found in the IBM Rational ClearCase Information Centers
Note: The 2003.06.00 ClearCase manuals can be found on-line at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/rational/docs/documentation/manuals/clearcase.html.
Related Information
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Document Information
Modified date:
16 June 2018
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