CODEWITHSUNDEEP
svncontinuous-integrationvisual-sourcesafe
Achilles
Achilles

Reputation: 11299

Using Subversion in conjunction with Visual Source Safe

The shop I work in is in the process of phasing out Visual Source Safe and migrating to Subversion. I've set up a continuous intergration server using Subversion. From my current understanding of how SVN works locally, it stores hidden metadata in each directory that has been downloaded from the repository. My question is:

  1. Is it possible to add these hidden metadata directories to a project's Visual Source Safe repository without impacting how VSS manages the project? The thinking behind this question is that if I can add the SVN metadata into Visual Source Safe, then it would be a trivial task for the shop to continue using VSS for local development but then commit the changes to SVN which would allow the continuous integration server to build and version the code. Thanks for any feedback you might provide!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 172

Answers (2)

Michael Hackner
Michael Hackner

Reputation: 8645

It's unclear to me exactly what your current workflow is, and why you want to check metadata from one VCS into the other. If it's your goal to have people using both SVN and VSS simultaneously in some respect, that seems like it would be very difficult and not conducive to the stated goal of "phasing out Visual Source Safe and migrating to Subversion." There has to be some cutoff date at which someone says "OK, when you come in tomorrow, VSS will no longer work; everyone will use SVN." Otherwise it will die a slow, painful death.

I think the best thing to do would be

  1. Get everyone trained and comfortable with SVN (while still using VSS for their work)
  2. Set the cutoff date
  3. Use one of the VSS to SVN converter tools
    http://www.codeplex.com/VSS2SVN
    http://www.pumacode.org/projects/vss2svn
    http://www.poweradmin.com/sourcecode/vssmigrate.aspx
    (none of which I have experience with — just pulled from other SO questions like this and this)
  4. Never look back

My 2¢

Upvotes: 3

M4N
M4N

Reputation: 96561

Putting the SVN metadata into SourceSafe might result in a problem for SVN, because SourceSafe makes the files read-only once they are checked-in. I'm not sure if this is OK for SVN.

..but after thinking some more: you don't want to put SVN metadata into SourceSafe, because this metadata belongs to the local SVN working copy and should therefore not be shared with other developers.

Upvotes: 4

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