Please, dont use this :D if a company is trying to make you use VSS, just refuse until they migrate to git/mecurial. There is absolutely no reason to have to work around this insanely difficult, unsafe source control system.
If you need ammunition to make this change there is plenty here: https://developsense.com/visual-sourcesafe-version-control-unsafe-at-any-speed
but my headlines would be:
- It massively exposes the business to risk from malicious users
- it exposes risk in the form that people can lock files and go on holiday, massively increasing the chance of a single point of failure and potentially grinding software updates to a hault
- it does not have merge strategies that will make any sense to a modern software engineer, massively impacting the agility you can move with and increasing risk of regression
- It does not have rollback strategies that will make any sense to a modern software engineer,massively impacting the ability of a company to roll back in the case of any P1 issues
- it is not familiar to any modern software engineer, massively impacting the agility you can move with
- There are many software engineers, myself included, that would probably not take a job at your company if they knew you were still relying on VSS with no plans to remove it, drastically affecting your hiring pool.
A Bash script for interop between git and vss
#What does it do? The basic idea is to keep one "mirror" of the VSS source that is treated as the "origin" by git. In the latest version the default is the double directory method, which in a nutshell:
- Gets the latest SS code and puts it in a directory %PROJECT$_Upstream (this will be your VSS mirror)
- Initializes a git repo, adds & commits everything
- With source safe history
- Note: This is why .gitignore_global needs to be set up correctly See: Initialisation
- Clones that repo into %PROJECT$_git
- Call sspull and sspush instead of git pull (origin) and git push (origin) -Warning If you do call git pull, git push accidentally then it will mess up the logic but you should be able to fix it with sspushDiffFrom
See API for more details
Note: Postfixes are configurable
Sometimes, even in 2014, you have to use VSS and often its without the ability to branch etc.
I started using Git alongside VSS and found keeping them in synch a chore, so I created some scripts to speed up the process
###Alternative Purpose A lot of the commands such as ssclone, ssadd, ssdelete and sscommit might be useful for anyone who wants to use pure VSS but is more used to git commands. Really all they are is VSS command line wrapped up with additional work to adjust for VSS command line style. (e.g. in VSS you need to be in the correct directory for add etc to work as you would expect..)
- You will need to install git for windows (personally I installed git extensions)
- You might want to grab ConEmu as frankly without it, windows cmd line is almost unusable
- Have quick acces to git bash (for example I have my defult ConEmu set to git bash)
##Initialisation
- Append Visual Studio.gitignore to your gitignore_global with one extra "*.githistory"
- Open "gitvssinterop.sh" and Modify the correct variables (see Bash Variables)
- Add "gitvssinterop.sh" in the method you prefer
- e.g. open "~/.bashrc" and add source "path/to/gitvssinterop.sh"
- run "ssinit"
At this point you have a git repo with all the SS source code :-)
##General Usuage The attempt has been to make the syntax familiar to users of git
- use sspull to grab the latest from SS and merge with git (its recommended you run this inside master or run masterpullss)
- use sspush to push SS
NOTE currently there is nothing stopping you from doing a sspush before sspull and overwriting changes, make sure you always sspull before sspush
For the most part you can therefore just use git, I personally use git-diffall with master and rarely have much to do with source safe. In theory provided you always do an sspull before sspush all merge issues etc will be handled via git
- Use ssdiff when you want to double check my scripts are working :-)
As long as you stick to using git and only running these commands you should'nt need any of the other commands but see API for if you find yourself stuck
The most likley "fixit" command you will need is ssamend
#Bash Variables
####Your VSS user name SSNAME=
####Your source safe project details CURRENT_SOURCE_SAFE_PROJECT=
Set to VSS source safe project e.g. : $ProjectFolder (visible in the VSS GUI when folder is selected "Contents of <CURRENT_SOURCE_SAFE_PROJECT>" ##Where does your project live PROJ_DIR="/c/Users/you/Documents/Projects/YourProject"
<TODO: set on ssinit>
####Your Commit Details
ACTIVE_TRACK_REF=15
PROJECT_NAME=
Currently the VSS comment is created by going:
SS_COMMENT="$PROJECT_NAME - TGR: $ACTIVE_TRACK_REF\n\n"
in some places and:
SS_COMMENT="$PROJECT_NAME - TGR: $ACTIVE_TRACK_REF \n\n$GIT_COMMENT"
in the important place.
Where GIT_COMMENT is "git log --pretty=format:"%h %s" --no-merges -n 3"
This way the VSS comment is basically just a summary of your git comments, flavoured with the formal needs of the comment This is by far the area that needs the most editing that is not currently easily done. (TODO move comment into a function)
In my case there is zero requirement for anything other then the TGR number, hence the lack of work
NOTE yes its currently geared for TGR, feel free to modify
#API The attempt has been to make the syntax familiar to users of git and for it to be used with git, however you can use most of the commands without git
##ssamend This command is for when you have modified something in upstream and want to add it without going through git and sspush. its not for amending a comment in the git sense, instead its more of a "I need to add this to SS but I don't want to add it to git" or "oops I have managed to confuse sspush"
It basically works out what is different locally (git diff HEAD^) and then commits those changes to source safe
##ssclone This uses ss get to grab all of the code within vss, making it writeable and leaving it "checked in" note this may ask you for a password when it is ran depending on your VSS set up, it should be possible to embed the password TODO ##sspush sspush works out what is different from your repo and "upstream", records it (updateModDelAddVars) (e.g. the folder) and then does a git push. At this point it jumps into "upstream" and runs "ssfullcommit"
##sspushDiffFrom sspush basically works by calling this with the argument "origin". If you have accidentally called "git push" and therefore made origin in sync with you but not VSS then you can use this command to correct the mistake.
Check the VSS to find out the last commit you put into SS (this will be in both the comments and VSS's copy of fullgithistory ) then call
sspushDiffFrom
##sspull sspull jumps into "upstream" runs an "ssclone", commits it into git and then jumps back and runs a "git pull"
##ssfullcommit At this point we knows the difference between SS and our folder, so we run ssadd on all the files that need adding, ssdelete on all the files that need deleting and sscommit on all the modified files
##ssdelete Deletes files from source safe
##ssadd Adds files to source safe
##sscommit Checks the file out of source safe, overwrites it with our copy, checks file into source safe.
##ssdiff Runs "ss Diff -R" but then transforms it into a more readable output
I am evolving this as I use it, as such some features may not work "out of the box" as they have been updated after the fact and not updated. I appreciate any issues raised against these, I will at some point start actively unit testing.
#Depreciated Bash Variables Originally when using the branch method I created a way of doing "hard diffs" this basically grabbed a new clone of SS and used beyondcompare to diff the folders. This hasn't been used in a while because I recommend using ssdiff instead and normal git-diffall when you want to do a folder compare.
##Your BeyondCompare Session It's better to create a beyond compare session so you can set it up how you like, basically when you use beyondcompare you can save a "session" that keeps all your settings. So if you want to do "hard diffs" its a good idea to set this up
BEYOND_COMPARE_SESSION=
For a "hard diff" a new folder needs to be created and ss checked out to it,
REF_APPEND="_REF"