`cleartool lsco -r -cvi -me` is extremely slow com

Question

I'd like to be able to utilize lsco on the command line for better integration with Emacs, but it runs prohibitively slowly!

Usually, GUIs are slower!

Answer 1

Not with the exact same behavior. But if you use a dynamic view,

cleartool lspriv -co -s

is probably much faster than

cleartool lsco -r -cview

And if the former isn't what you want, maybe you can set up a filter script around it to fit your needs.

Answer 2

From the technote "Recursively checkout and checkin elements":

It is recommended that if performance is degraded due to this recursive operation that either the operation be changed (say to checkout/checkin in smaller chunks) or to stop the operation all together.

In other words, the recursive nature of lsco (and associated commands) doesn't scale well.
As opposed to the GUI, which might very well launch several request per main directories involved.