Why would the developers even go along with such a switch? Why don't they just create facts? Put up a centralized git repository somewhere and get coding?
The repo was being monitored; lack of activity on it would have raised eyebrows.
But hey, ClearCase is from IBM, so it has to be good, right? It was made by a team of experts, not some pudgy Finn. Clearly the codemonkeys just don't understand business, which is why we're building our web app in Java over their objections. Java is what Enterprise uses, and this is Enterprise software. Makes perfect sense.
Could you setup a mirroring system? Run a nightly cronjob that takes all commits to the git repository and syncs them to ClearCase? I've never used ClearCase, so I have no idea if this would work, but a similar system is used at Google where we have a wrapper around git that creates a Perforce changelist out of our commits.
And then some manager will find out and fire someone for wasting valuable company time and resources hacking on some irrelevant side project or hacking the companies security system or something.
Some places are just broken politically and no amount of technical cleverness can fix it. At places like that your only option is to learn to live with it, learn to play the political game or quit.
The CC command line tool is a total piece of crap but it has all functionalities
So theoretically it could work, but you would waste some time
Not to mention people related to CC are usually rude, ignorant, afraid to be made redundant so they rely on blackmail and threats to keep their position (yes, I'm generalizing)