1. Get the latest changes from upstream by doing an update. (Click the green lighting bolt - that's the update button).
2. If there are overlaps (i.e. conflicts that couldn't be resolved automatically), do an overlap search, go through each file and manually merge (i prefer to use Eclipse's merge tool here). When done, do a merge on each file. This will mark it as merged on your machine.
3. Now that you're up to date with the stream (i.e. branch from which you are working), do a modified search to see which files you've changed.
4. For each modified file, do a Diff against Backed Version to see your changes and make sure you like them. Once satisfied which the changes, do a keep operation on each file to mark your local version of the file as being ready to send to the stream.
5. Don't forget to do a external search now so that you can see any new files that you've created that haven't been added to the repository yet. For each file in this list, do an Add to AccuRev Depot operation so that the local files are ready to add to the stream.
6. Now do a pending search to get a list of all files that are waiting to be promoted (i.e. moved from your local machine to the stream where others can get your changes).
7. Select each file in the pending list and do a promote to actually commit it to the repository. Add your comment, and oh yes - you must have a bug # that you enter in order to add your code. Pretty much this is meaningless - everyone just makes a bogus bug # with some generic error like "scott's code changes for iteration 2" and uses it over and over.

My friend and co-worker Bruce has posted a blog entry talking about why we're using AccuRev. Click Here for his review, which includes phrases such as "crazy expensive", "arcane and fragile", "steep learning curve", "doesn't make it easier".

So why use it? It does do one thing very well, and that is merge changes effectively, accurately, and automatically when you have a huge number of engineers concurrently modifying large parts of the code base - thus avoiding "merge hell". And that's why we use it ...

Tip #1: Another annoying 'feature' of AccuRev is that each workspace is associated with a hostname. And for some reason, the hostnames seem to change on me once in a while. I don't profess to know why this is. But once it happens, you can no longer access your workspace to do updates and promotions. To restore your hostname, right-click on the workspace, click edit, then click finish. Walla - hostname updated back to your current hostname.

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