Archival of CMS historical data when moving to a LINUX platform

[Jack D. Lewis]

Is there any product/facility available to allow the extraction of all CMS historical data (versions, history, classes, etc) and allow importing of this data to a LINUX based Code Management System - RCS or ClearCase(preferably)?

[Hoff]

It would probably be best to ask this question of whomever is dealing with RCS or ClearCase -- asking for help from the folks on the platform you're departing from is, well, not likely to attract much attention. Simply put, the folks you're moving to have more of an investment here, and a better idea of the capabilities of the tools.

That written, I'd be mildly surprised if this CMS import tool existed. Source code migrations are pretty isolated affairs. (You might find a two-step sequence around; convert from CMS to "something else", and from there into the target environment.)

Extract it into text and process it into what might be expected by ClearCase, Git, SVN or such.

Consider packaging all of the CMS library up into a big zip (with the "right" version of CMS, MMS, etc, installation kits included), though it would likely also be useful to specifically extract the CMS history into a separate text file and check it into the source code control environment.

Also consider creating and packaging up the CMS release ("reference") directories, too, so you have a way to see back into the source pool at "major" points in your development process.

You could certainly use the callable CMS API to write up a tool to feed in the data required in the target environment. I've been dealing with the CMS API for eons; it's certainly capable of managing an export tool. Albeit a tool that you or somebody you designate gets to write.