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> When a developer wants to develop against a specific runtime he installs the right framework, and then temporarily transitions into a name space where /usris

> When a developer wants to develop against a specific runtime he installs the right framework, and then temporarily transitions into a name space where /usris mounted from the framework sub-volume, and /home/$USER from his own home directory. In this name space he then runs his build commands. He can build in multiple name spaces at the same time, if he intends to builds software for multiple runtimes or architectures at the same time. it reminds me of the Clearcase version control system. You would run `cleartool setview <viewname>` to enter the namespace of that "view". Like Las Vegas, everything you did within that view would stay in that view. This was before containers and VM's became widespread. It felt a like magic, because you could run one command and see a totally different build and tooling environment. Under the hood it meant that running `make` would pull in objects from other teams who used exactly the same view as you (so like ccache but across the network scaled to N-engineers). Most companies have thrown clearcase out when svn/git came along because poor administration practices could push license / storage costs through the roof (and it was never cheap to begin with). We have git/mercurial,... today which I'm quite happy for. But considering how old all these ideas are, it's a shame FOSS is still stuck in the stone age in this regard. [1] https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSSH27_8.0.1/com.ibm.rational.clearcase.cc_ref.doc/topics/ct_setview.htm https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSSH27_8.0.1/com...

pjmlp 7y ago
FOSS feels stuck in the stone age for many things, because doing something like ClearCase, world class IDEs or game middleware requires typical corporation level budgets, and since most don't want to pay for tooling, only corporate developers get the nice toys. Another thing that ClearCase was already great at, 20 years ago, was providing a file system cache for C and C++ builds, providing a mechanism to only compile translation units that had outdated object files across all developer team.
pjc50 7y ago
And yet ClearCase was notorious for being the bad old world that everyone wanted to get away from. I'm sure someone will be along with war stories to tell us why the reality wasn't so great.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  When I was contractor I worked with two companies that used ClearCase sometime around 2000. In theory it looked really good but it just never worked. The whole dev team probably spent more time on ClearCase than they spent on dev work. It was a never ending nightmare.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
  :) I was one of those who fought hard for many years so that we could replace it with svn/git, and we eventually did. It was still ahead of it's time back then. But I agree it was a nightmare to administrate and if you used clearcase UCM it was one huge horror show for users. UCM meant your whole process is locked into Rational/IBM's way of doing things (and it had to die because Agile came along so clearcase felt very outdated).

pjmlp 7y ago

FOSS feels stuck in the stone age for many things, because doing something like ClearCase, world class IDEs or game middleware requires typical corporation level budgets, and since most don't want to pay for tooling, only corporate developers get the nice toys. Another thing that ClearCase was already great at, 20 years ago, was providing a file system cache for C and C++ builds, providing a mechanism to only compile translation units that had outdated object files across all developer team.

pjc50 7y ago

And yet ClearCase was notorious for being the bad old world that everyone wanted to get away from. I'm sure someone will be along with war stories to tell us why the reality wasn't so great.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
When I was contractor I worked with two companies that used ClearCase sometime around 2000. In theory it looked really good but it just never worked. The whole dev team probably spent more time on ClearCase than they spent on dev work. It was a never ending nightmare.
DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
:) I was one of those who fought hard for many years so that we could replace it with svn/git, and we eventually did. It was still ahead of it's time back then. But I agree it was a nightmare to administrate and if you used clearcase UCM it was one huge horror show for users. UCM meant your whole process is locked into Rational/IBM's way of doing things (and it had to die because Agile came along so clearcase felt very outdated).