What to put in which kind of comment in ClearCase?

Question

I'm used to comments in Git and Mercurial repositories:

• Commit comments, which may involve multiple files over the whole repository - has a comment. Commits without comments are possible, but rare (in my experience).
• Branch descriptions: These are the opposite in terms of use: Many people don't even know about them, and they're rarely used (in my experience).

I "know" what to write in commit comments (and branch descriptions if I use them). Various online tools even make assumptions about their content, e.g. BitBucket and GitHub which close issues for you, if you comment fixes #123 on the fixing commit.

But when working with ClearCase - which I'm new to - I find myself confused. You see, ClearCase versioning is per file; there are no all-repository commits; and there are "views", which are complex selections of versions for each of a repository's files.

There are also more types of comments than I'm used to:

• View comments - added to a newly-created view
• Branch type comments - files can have revisions in any of various named branch types; and when you create a new possible branch type, that gets a comment too
• Check-out comments - per file (or group of files) that's checked out
• Check-in comments - per file (or group of files) that's checked in

My question: Can you give a rule of thumb for what kind of text one should place in which kind of ClearCase comments? In a typical workflow?

• Bart van Ingen Schenau: Is ClearCase already being used by a team in your organization? You might ask them for their day-to-day workflow and conventions.
• einpoklum: @BartvanIngenSchenau: We kind of inherited a CC codebase and nobody has taken the time to set out a commenting convention.
• Bart van Ingen Schenau: If nobody is familiar with the version control system, that can also be a good argument to move the codebase over to a new (familiar) version control system and keep the old one around only to be able to inspect the history past the point where you inherited the code.
• einpoklum: @BartvanIngenSchenau: Indeed, but that takes time and effort. For now that's what we have.