Remote access to SourceSafe - Nesterovsky bros

Sunday, 04 January 2004

A half year ago I had started a new project that allows accessing to SourceSafe repository remotely. Than I've changed my mind and I've decided to implement more common interface for version control systems (not only for SourceSafe). The main reason for creating of such kind project was that we had need in access to remote version control system, but all ports was closed by our ISP. There were several opened ports (25, 110 and 80). So, we even couldn't use the CVS. At that time an idea about some bridge that allows accessing to version control system (actually at that moment we have need in SourceSafe) as a web service (via HTTP) was born.

Before creating own system I've investigated the market and have found several more or less acceptable solutions:

SourceOffsite - of course the best existing at that moment solution, but it also used some specified TCP/IP port, so we were not be able to use it due to the same reason as we were not be able to use CVS. More over, their prices were the highest for such kind of products.
Than I had found VssConnect - also not a worst solution, but lack of documentation and they did not support (at that moment) some useful SourceSafe functionality. And that is more important they also used some TCP/IP port. :-( By the way, their prices are more reasonable.
After that I had started to look for a product, which is implemented as web service. And I've found one: VSS.Net. But they also do not provide some SourceSafe functionality: sharing and branching files, retrieving of history, pinning/unpinning files and etc. And they do not implement integration in VS IDE. The price of their product a bit higher then the previous one, but still acceptable.

When I had studied these solutions, I've decided to create my own solution. And, since for me this was not a main job, but just an opportunity to study something new in practice, so, I've decided to create this solution as a freeware .NET product.

At the 24 November 2003 I've published the first fully functional version that can be integrated into Visual Studio .NET 2003 IDE. So, my task was done, but right now I see a lot of places where I can improve performance of my product, but I have a doubt: do somebody need in this project at all?

Sunday, 04 January 2004 10:50:37 UTC

Comments [17] -
SCCBridge

Thursday, 08 January 2004 11:07:08 UTC

Does anybody need this project?

Well I for one do. or rather will do when I get some time to try it out (will be by end of jan), so much so I found your site way back, saw the start of the project, but lost the link. Took me nearly a month of on and off searching to find it again. So the question I think is "does anybody know about this project?"

Keep up the good work, from what I've seen it looks great.

Andy Bond

Saturday, 10 January 2004 09:27:07 UTC

May be you are right. But keep in mind that this project is not sponsored by anyone, I event do not receive donations. So, I cannot promote this project as good as this can be done for commercial projects. The only one thing that I can do is to publish announces in newsgroups whenever I'm releasing a new version.

If you or somebody else have some thoughts how to promote this project or improve it, I'll be glad to listen and to incarnate them in life.

Arthur Nesterovsky

Saturday, 10 January 2004 09:44:48 UTC

Arthur ~

This project looks terrific! And I plan on doing some local testing with it starting tomorrow. I am a core team member for a large open source project utilizing .Net and our team struggles constantly with problems with GotDotNet. We are reluctant to take advantage of SourceForge as CVS is unfamiliar to most of our MS developers.

Thanks for your efforts. Maybe we can be of some service to you if things work out.

Cheers!

Scott Willhite

Saturday, 10 January 2004 13:26:44 UTC

Arthur,
I work with Scott on DotNetNuke, an open-source portal project. We have been looking for a long time for a viable solution to our source control needs and it looks like you just may have the solution.

I am amazed every day by the work that programmers are willing to donate to the rest of the development community. Keep up the good work as surely there is a need for this product in the marketplace. Additionally, I find every open source project a great source for expanding my own programming skills.

Joe Brinkman

Saturday, 17 January 2004 22:01:48 UTC

Hello everybody,
there was some break in the progress of SCCBridge project. There are several reasons of this break. The first one was my doubts. Right now, I think, that they were rather strained doubts. The second reason was BizTalk 2004. We (me and my brother Vladimir) have started to study it. By the way, what it is an amazing and promising thing. The last one was another project on my main work (it also was very interesting and I even couldn't look aside during this project).
But now, I hope, I'll begin to improve my project. If somebody have some thoughts/suggestions what exactly ought to be improved/changed - just write message to me or write a comment right in this blog.

Arthur Nesterovsky

Saturday, 24 January 2004 11:03:10 UTC

Hello Arthur,

Your project looks great, I was considering a lot of SCC integration tools and so general interfaces were provided only in your software. I'm very interested in the bridge with CVS. Currently, all SCC-CVS bridges I've evaluated (there are not a lot of them) could not be used while developing any serious project (except PushOK's plugin, that is unfortunately not freeware). So, I think your work in this direction would be very useful for entire .NET community that wants to use CVS control system, and not be stick to VSS or others.

Thank you again for your hard and useful work!
Alexei.

Alexei Krus

Tuesday, 24 February 2004 07:57:11 UTC

Hello everybody,

I've donwloaded, installed, tested and got really impressed! Both with architecture and implementation - great code quality, features, accesability and all about.

I have just one doubt: I was looking for a tool that would replace VSS client tools. My idea was - ok, let's have one licence on a server and use your tools to access it from anywhere. However, according to VSS licence, 'there is no server licence' - means, I have to buy a VSS licence for every developer in the house, although I do not need to use more then one with your solution!

How do you think - is there any way to legally use just one 'server' VSS licence with RepositoryExplorer on other machines??

Thanks and waitning for CVS integration,
Przemek

Przemek

Tuesday, 24 February 2004 08:40:59 UTC

Hi,

in my opinion they require that you will buy licenses for each developer since you have to install VSS to each developer's computer. Actually SourceSafe is not client-server solution. It just uses the same shared database from different places. In my solution you will use only one copy of SourceSafe, so, as I'm assuming, it's enough only one license. Indeed, they don't require that you will buy license for each user in a SourceSafe's database if only you use SourceSafe?!

Anyway, I suggest to clarify this question with SourceSafe support team. And if they say something about this question, I'll be thankful if you will share their answer with me.

Thanks for a good question.
Arthur.

P.S. I've plans about improvement of this project and implementing of all integration's topics, but right now I'm busy a little on my main work with a fixed-term contract.

Arthur Nesterovsky

Friday, 19 March 2004 14:56:43 UTC

Hi Arthur,

I like the sound of SCCBridge, and I've downloaded and installed both the server and client components for use with a Visual SourceSafe database, but when attempting to log in through the Repository Explorer I get the message "login: The request failed with HTTP status 405: Method not allowed." Any idea what might be causing this or where I can look to find out?

I think there's definitely a need for this functionality, I hope you'll continue to develop it.

Thanks,
Dale

Dale Morgan

Saturday, 20 March 2004 15:25:37 UTC

Hello,

Check please the path to srssafe.ini file in Web.config.

Please keep in mind the following:
1) path in Web.config should point at SourceSafe database (exactly at srssafe.ini file). Take a look at "RepositoryPath" key.
2) the current version of SCCBridge supports only SourceSafe databases that are placed at the same computer (on one of its local devices) where service is installed. This is a limitation of the current version of SCCBridge project.
3) ASPNET user (ASP.NET machine account) should have read/write/list/modify access on the folder, where srcsafe.ini is placed (and on its subfolders too).

Hope this helps.
Arthur

Arthur Nesterovsky

Friday, 26 March 2004 01:29:10 UTC

Hello,

Great work! The RepositoryExplorer works very well but the VisualStudio.NET 2003 integration is extremely slow. Is there any parameters we can change to make it faster?

Thanks,
Mark

Mark Rose

Friday, 09 April 2004 17:29:49 UTC

Hi Mark,

> Great work! The RepositoryExplorer works very well but the
> VisualStudio.NET 2003 integration is extremely slow. Is there
> any parameters we can change to make it faster?

Unfortunatelly right now my answer is NO.
The main problem is in protocol that IDE is used for communicating
with MSSCC provider.

But I'm thinking of some kind of caching that I'll plan to implement
in the next version. There are also plans to speed up starting of the integration module and to implement several functions of MSSCCI v 1.2 that allow to use batch functions.

Arthur Nesterovsky

Monday, 12 April 2004 17:04:41 UTC

I have been having great success with the repository explorer, but the IDE integration gives me problems. when trying to add a project, it gets part of the way, but when the project has subfolders, it doesn't add any files contained in them and then terminates with the "operation could not be complete" -- ideas?

timh

Tuesday, 13 April 2004 07:14:58 UTC

Hi Tim,

I have to investigate this problem. I don't have any idea for a while. But when I'll find the reason of such behaviour I'll fix it.

Arthur Nesterovsky

Friday, 17 September 2004 06:36:48 UTC

I use SCCBridge for a while and I can assure it is a great and usefull project.
The only problem I see right now is the speed of getting the list from the server.
On the other hand, file transfer is super fast. I tried a 1 MB file and it did it in a snap.
Thanks.

Luciano Furlan

Tuesday, 01 February 2005 22:43:15 UTC

Hello, could you help with the following:

calling
repository.GetList(@"/Dev", "", true, FilterOptions.FOLDER);
works well from within console application (repository is SourceSafeBridge)

However calling the following from within same console app
repository.OpenList(@"/Dev", "", true, FilterOptions.FOLDER);
fails with a null reference exception. Note: repository.Login and repository.Test both work. (here repository is a WebService proxy)

Any ideas?
Thanks!

Sean

Friday, 04 February 2005 21:35:59 UTC

Can you send me please your sources of second application (with web-service proxy)? May be I can help you.

Arthur Nesterovsky

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