Adjusting the VOB’s group ownership information

A VOB’s group is initially the same as the primary group of the user who created the VOB. A VOB is fully accessible only to those users who are members of that group.

Even though a VOB is accessible, problems might arise during checkout or mkelem (Add to Source Control) operations when all prospective users of the VOB do not belong to the same group.

If your community has multiple user groups, there are special considerations when members of different groups share a VOB:

Users can create an element only if their primary group is in the VOB’s group list. If members of more than one group need to create elements, you must add the primary groups of these users to the VOB’s group list. Use the cleartoolprotectvob command.
If members of more than one group need read access to an element, you must grant read access (and, for a directory, execute access) to others for that element. You must also grant read and execute access to others for all directories in the element’s path, up to and including the VOB root directory. Use the cleartoolprotect command to change permissions for an element. For more information and examples, see the protect reference page.
Users cannot modify an element (by checking in a new version, for example) unless they belong to the element’s group. The element’s group can be any group the user belongs to.
Note that to create an element, you must be able to check out the containing directory. Thus, a user can create an element only if both of these conditions are true:
- The user’s primary group is in the VOB’s group list.
- Any of the user’s groups is the group of the containing directory.

For detailed information about user identity and VOB access rights, see VOB and view access control.