[ILUG] Visual SourceSafe to CVS converter

[Kenn Humborg]

> I'm kicking around ideas for useful open source development work at the
> moment and one thing thats sprung to mind is a converter for Visual
> SourceSafe databases to CVS to help people who are making the
> switch.   I've
> seen VSS down so much here that I reckon we might change at some point and
> probably other places change every day.   Anyway, has anyone got any
> backgrounders on the VSS file format?   Also does anyone know
> anything about
> similar projects already up and running or just general information that
> might be useful?

AFAIK the file format is unpublished.  However, there are two APIs
for accessing it.

One is the MSSSC API (Microsoft Source Code Control API) which is
the original API that was used (and may still be used, I don't know)
in Visual C, Visual Basic, etc.  However, MS won't publish this API.

The other is a COM-based API which is documented (probably in the
MSDN, but I can't find it right now - ask in  microsoft.public.sourcesafe).
This will allow you to write a VB/VC++/Perl tool to retrieve full
history info for every file in the SourceSafe repository.

Alternatively, you could use the SourceSafe command line tools
to generate history reports, diffs, etc, from which you could
probably get enough info to re-create the revision history in
an RCS/CVS file.

The tricky part will be dealing with shared files and branches
in the SourceSafe repository.  It's got different ideas on
sharing and branching that probably won't be very compatible
with the RCS/CVS world-view.

Later,
Kenn