The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

The cm.exe by default is not on the path, even though it is a useful tool.

Some links on it:

• [WayBack] Plastic SCM version control · CLI guide
• [WayBack] Plastic SCM version control · cm find by example – Plastic SCM
• [WayBack] CmdRunner: The Plastic SCM API

Slow

One drawback: the cm.exe is slow in startup, likely because it is a .NET executable needing quite a few assemblies to load:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.7.1 Tools\CorFlags.exe" "C:\Program Files\PlasticSCM5\client\cm.exe"
Microsoft (R) .NET Framework CorFlags Conversion Tool. Version 4.7.2558.0
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Version : v4.0.30319
CLR Header: 2.5
PE : PE32
CorFlags : 0x1
ILONLY : 1
32BITREQ : 0
32BITPREF : 0
Signed : 0

Finding stuff

I get a feeling that there is quite a bit of cm functionality either undocumented, or hardly documented.

For instance, copying a title from the PlasticSCM GUI does not mean it will work as a cm command.

Despite the documentation indicating

When you run queries using comparison operators (>, <, >=, <=) from the command line, remember that the shell considers these operators as IO redirections, so you will need to enclose the queries with quotation marks:
cm find "branches where owner='pablo' and changesets >= '2013/03/01'"

you have to be really careful where to put the starting double quote: it has to be after the find command:

1. Example 1
   • Title
     User query: find changeset where branch='/main/test/My Branch Name' on repository 'Projects@ssl://plastic.example.org:8088' (22 Items - 0 selected)
   • Failure
     "C:\Program Files\PlasticSCM5\client\cm.exe" "find changeset where branch='/main/test/My Branch Name' on repository 'Projects@ssl://plastic.example.org:8088'"
Command 'find changeset where branch='/main/test/My Branch Name' on repository 'Projects@ssl://plastic.example.org:8088'' not found. Type cm showcommands to get a command list.
   • Success
     "C:\Program Files\PlasticSCM5\client\cm.exe" find "changeset where branch='/main/test/My Branch Name' on repository 'Projects@ssl://plastic.example.org:8088'"
2. Example 2
   • Title
     Changesets /main/test/My Branch Name@Projects@ssl://plastic.example.org:8088 (4 Items - 1 selected)
   • Failure
     "C:\Program Files\PlasticSCM5\client\cm.exe" find "Changesets /main/test/My Branch Name@Projects@ssl://plastic.example.org:8088"
Error: unexpected char: '@'
   • Success
     "C:\Program Files\PlasticSCM5\client\cm.exe" find "Changesets where branch='/main/test/My Branch Name' on repository 'Projects@ssl://plastic.example.org:8088'"

This means that changeset can be Changesets: it is case insensitive and has multiple aliases. It looks similar to commands I used in my days of using Rational ClearCase – Wikipedia

I need to find out how to translate a non-query title into a query one. That will make it a lot easier to go from PlasticSCM GUI to the cm.

No XML documentation

The cm find command has a cool parameter --xml, which dumps the output in an XML tree.

My original goal was to see if I could turn the XML into something like Markdown or RST, using an XSLT transform like these:

• [WayBack] xslt-markdown/markdown.xsl at master · bauhouse/xslt-markdown · GitHub
• [WayBack] XHTML to Markdown XSLT Translation · GitHub
• [WayBack] Markdown and XML
• [WayBack] A transformable markup document format
• [WayBack] XSL stylesheets for TEI XML

For those transforms, you have to know how the input XML is structured. However, this information is undocumented.

When asked, PlasticSCM indicated there is no XSD for it claiming it was “super simple export to XML”:

[WayBack] Plastic SCM on Twitter: “No XSD, I’m afraid. Just super simple export to XML.… “

Is there an XSD definition of the output format that the @plasticscm `cm –xml` produces. The root element seems to be always `PLASTICQUERY`, but https://t.co/AE0dBZOxm1 reveals no hits.

— Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social (@jpluimers) September 12, 2018

https://twitter.com/plasticscm/status/1039842761304940544

I hoped the elements were just uppercase versions of the output below, but they are not. Bummer.

–jeroen

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