Clearcase and cons Link woes

[Guy Delamarter]

I am using cons in conjunction with Clearcase (the source control [file]
system) on a Solaris box.  The Conscript is set up for building multiple
configurations (multiple platforms) by creating cons Links in the source
subdirectories.  Because cons makes sure the source files then appear in the
link directory, and are compiled there, compilation errors are reported
using paths to the link directory and not paths to the original source
directory.  Unfortunately, clearcase does not (at least by default)
understand that these linked files are actually source control files, so an
unwitting developer who tries to fix the problem by checking out the linked
file runs into difficulty.  They have to understand how cons and the
Conscripts work in order to understand how to check out and edit the files -
which is what I am trying to avoid.  I am also trying to avoid changing
clearcase or having to wrap checkout/checkin in special scripts to figure
out what is going on for the developer.

I guess what I think I want (but not necessarily the best solution) is some
way to have cons leave the source files in the original source directory but
compile the object files to the link directory so that platform objects
don't collide.  This is closer to the way Microsoft's DevStudio by default
handles multiple configurations (not that I'm any particular fan of
DevStudio), and is the only reasonable solution I've seen so far.  Is this
feasible?  What problems would there be in having such a feature?

I haven't tried, but I would guess that the problem is even worse for
snapshot views on Windows since there are no true links there - only copies.
With UNIX there might be hope to list where the hard links
come from and follow the trail to find the real source file, although this
is an extra step.

Thanks,
Guy Delamarter