Doddy Christiana Saputra

Hi Folks,

To fulfil the needs from many friends developer which they had faced the problem of how to migrate their development source code from the previous source control in this case visual studio source safe 2005 into more wider environment of ALM integrated tools development Team Foundation Server.

Team Foundation Server provides tools to help us migrate existing source maintained in a Visual Source Safe (VSS) database to TFS source control. TFS provides a VSSConverter tool that allows you to migrate files, folders, version history, labels, and user information. Using the VSSConverter tool is a two-stage process; first you use the tool to analyze your existing VSS database to identify potential problems, and then you use it to actually perform the migration.

By following the steps outlined in this How To article, we should be able to successfully migrate your existing source code. The main issues that you are likely to encounter are due to some differences in the way TFS handles version control in comparison to VSS.

For example, because TFS does not support sharing of files, shared files are migrated by copying the version of the file at the time sharing began to a destination folder. Also, because branching in VSS uses sharing, the migration of a branched file results in the file being copied to the destination folder in TFS source control. As TFS does not support pinning, to help you locate items in TFS source control that were previously pinned in your VSS database, the VSSConverter tool labels any file that was pinned with the “PINNED” label.

Before We Begin

To successfully perform the steps outlined in this How To article:

                We must be logged in with an account that is a member of the Team Foundation Administrators group.

                We must have the VSS 2005 client installed on the computer on which the converter is running. The converter stops with a warning if you are running an earlier version of VSS. You should also make sure that you use the VSS 2005 client Analyze command in the event that this command is able to detect issues that previous versions were not. The VSS database does not need to be a native VSS 2005 database.

                We must have Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Express Edition installed and enabled on the computer on which the converter is running. The converter tool uses the local SQL Server instance as a temporary database during the conversion. SQL Server Express Edition is installed by default with Visual Studio 2005.

                Make sure we gather your TFS domain name and the list of TFS user names as defined in your Microsoft Active Directory®.

                Make sure you have your VSS administrator user name and password and your TFS project administrator username and password.

Okay let’s move for real rock’n roll, we will use a view step to make real implementation steps which are:

Step 1 – Back Up Your VSS Database

Prior to performing a migration, start by creating a backup copy of the VSS database you want to migrate.

1. Ask all users to check in their files and then log off the VSS database. Ask the users to close both the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and VSS Explorer.

Important: Checked-out files are not migrated to TFS.

2. Check that no one is currently logged into the database.

3. Make sure that no analyze jobs are scheduled to run against the database.

4. Copy the following folders (located beneath your VSS install directory) to your backup location:

\DATA

\Temp

\USERS

5. Copy the following files to your backup location:

User.txt

Srcsafe.ini

By default, you can find these files in the following folder: \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VSS

Step 2 – Analyze Your VSS Database to Resolve Data Integrity Issues

In this step, you use the Visual SourceSafe Analyze utility to locate and fix data integrity issues in the database.

1. Open a Command prompt and run Analyze.exe to search for database corruption or database errors. Use the following command:

analyze “<sourcesafe data directory>”

Use the -I option for unattended execution. This command reports potential problems.

2. If there are permissions problems, “unable to checkout files” errors, “losing checkout status” errors, or any other errors that refer to the Status.dat file or to the Rights.dat file, run the Ddconv.exe program or the Ddconvw.exe program. These programs update a VSS database from an older format to the current format. By default, these programs are installed in the \Admin subdirectory.

 OkayI will Continue on next part-2

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 3:11 am and is filed under VSTS / TFS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.