Writing a type manager program (Linux or the UNIX system)

When cleartool invokes a type manager method, it passes to the manager, in ASCII format, all the arguments needed to perform the operation. For example, many methods accept a new_container_name argument, specifying the path of a data container to which data is to be written.

One or more of the parameters can be ignored. For example, the create_version method is passed pred_container_name, the path of the predecessor version data container. If the type manager implements incremental differences, this is required information. Otherwise, the predecessor data container is of no interest.

Arguments are often object identifiers (OIDs). You need not know anything about how OIDs are generated; consider each OID to be a unique name for an element, branch, or version. In general, only type managers that store multiple versions in the same data container need be concerned with OIDs.

For more information on argument processing, see files versionvault-home-dir/lib/mgrs/mgr_info.h (for C-language programs) and versionvault-home-dir/lib/mgrs/mgr_info.sh (for Bourne shell scripts).