Vinod,
Please note: it is not possible to 'convert' from any version control
system to another. Each tool like VSS, CVS, CVSNT, PVCS, ClearCase
exists because there is a market for it - they each had particular
design goals in mind when the systems were built and they each have
different strengths and weaknesses. In particular one version control
system cannot be exchanged for another without also changing how your
software configuration management processes work (and possibly your
project management, QA, and several other business processes).
Some people think that all version control systems are identical and
that a company can switch between them -- if this were true there would
be one tool and lots of different 'brandings' - but that is not the
case. Also lots of people do not account for the cost of their software
systems and the impact on their business systems. There was a great
article on the valuation of IT assets published in The Financial Times
UK Edition 36,501 on Monday October 1 2007, and I believe the author
will be releasing the complete whitepaper soon. Basically it talks about
the lack of business cases for the benefit of software and also the
business case for maintaining legacy assets. The costs of replacing
software like VSS for CVS/CVSNT are astronomical and rarely worth it to
the business, except perhaps that techie employees who like playing with
the latest gadgets are less likely to leave that week/month for some
other company, thereby reducing employee turnover.
Of course VSS could be considered a 'special case' since a) it is no
longer developed and b) has a history of technical problems such as
corruption of repositories. However it's still well worth being aware
of the full cost of your 'conversion' and also understanding the wider
impacts.
Finally VSS implements a specific model of SCM best characterised as
'reserved centralised' which CVS does not support (but CVSNT does with
the correct implementation and configuration). Switching from 'reserved
centralised' to 'unreserved distributed' (which is the CVS model and
default CVSNT model) makes for a very differrent user experience and
also requires a different kind of project management. Sucking out your
VSS repo and putting it in CVS/CVSNT will not magically fix your user
expectations or business systems.
The only VSS to CVSNT 'suck and spit' converter I know of is this one
which was written by a contributor to the CVSNT project:
Visual Source Safe to CVS Converter
:pserver:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/cvsroot/vss2cvs
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vss2cvs
Be sure to post CVSNT questions to the CVSNT newsgroup.
http://www.cvsnt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cvsnt
or
news://news.cvsnt.org/support.cvsnt
Regards,
Arthur Barrett
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Damaraju, Vinod
Sent: Friday, 11 April 2008 6:22 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: vss to cvs conversion
Hi,
I would appreciate any feedback on VSS to CVS conversion. After
some research, I found 2 tools being discussed on the internet.
"vss2cvs" a perl script and "VSSExtractor" & "cserver" which are C++
applications functioning in a client-server mode. Can anybody respond
with their experiences on these scripts? Specifically, the capability to
preserve VSS History and migrate it to CVS and also the ability to apply
incremental updates, once a baseline has been established in CVS.
Thanks,
Vinod Damaraju
