Thursday, June 7, 2012

MIgrating VSS to Subversion

If you're a long-time Microsoft development shop, chances are you've had to deal with its source control tool, Visual Source Safe. After years of wrangling with VSS and dodging the bullets of corruption and loss that have formed its reputation over the years, I'm undertaking the task of migrating our VSS repository to Subversion. Yeah, I evaluated Team Foundation Server, but it was just too much.

Don't know how many out there might be contemplating the same task, but I'll be posting a few musings here and there about my progress, obstacles, tools, and lessons learned along the way. Hopefully, something I encounter will help someone else.

For starters, the Subversion repository will be entirely Windows-hosted - unfortunately, slapping Subversion on a Linux server (which is my preferred option) just isn't going to work. Also, I'll be installing the TortoiseSVN repository client and the AnkhSVN source control plug in for Visual Studio. And I've already taken quite a few steps in migrating the repository with the C#-based open-source tool VSSMigrate, which is hosted on CodePlex, and uses the SharpSVN .NET-based Subversion API. Considering that I'll have an objective of migrating just about everything in VSS, including deleted (but not purged) items, I suspect the process even with VSSMigrate will be tedious.

As I post my progress, feel free to post any questions or thoughts you may have as I Go Forth and Migrate - and hopefully wean away from SourceSafe!

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