A small tool to remove SCC information of a VS2003.NET project file

• Download the project - 21.5 Kb

Introduction

With the yet to be released SourceSafe 2005, we decided to switch back to a SourceSafe database for some of our projects instead of a CVS repository. And saying that it have been quite a pain is not even beginning to come close to reality. Source-Code integration in VS.NET is not a nightmare, but you have to change your project files and delete a few other files to get rid of it. Failing to do so may get you in real trouble when rebinding to another SCC provider.

This "article" (OK, it may not be a great one, but that's my first one for Code Project) summarizes what I have found while building this tool, either by myself or on blogs and newsgroups.

Using the code

I decided to write this small tool to help getting rid of everything that is related to source-code control. It's quite straightforward to use: just enter the path to your project or solution file and click Continue, and it should work.

For now, there are (quite) a few limitations:

• It does not handle Web Projects (I'll do it as soon as I can)
• Only .csproj and .vbproj and deployment project (.vdproj) files are supported, and having any other type of project will block you from using this tool.
• It doesn't change the Read-Only status of files that are not .sln, .csproj or .vbproj.

Points of Interest

Visual Studio keeps its SCC information in quite a few places. And if you want to get clean, you'll have to get rid of all of them.

The Solution File (.sln)

The solution file contains a section that is dedicated to SCC. If you open the .sln file in a text editor, you'll have something that looks like :

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 8.00
Project("{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}") = "MyProject", 
    "Projects\MyProject.csproj", "{B1A1C06F-EB84-4215-975E-6B0B57496BAC}" 
        ProjectSection(ProjectDependencies) = postProject 
        EndProjectSection
EndProject 
        ... other projects in your solution ...
Global
    GlobalSection(SourceCodeControl) = preSolution
        SccNumberOfProjects = 1
        SccProjectName0 = Perforce\u0020Project
        SccLocalPath0 = .
        SccProvider0 = MSSCCI:Perforce\u0020SCM
        CanCheckoutShared = true
        SolutionUniqueID = {0F9ACC79-634F-44DB-9C57-C4B0C461AA7B}
        SccProjectUniqueName1 = Projects\\MyProject.csproj
        SccLocalPath1 = MyProject
    EndGlobalSection
        ... other global sections ...        
EndGlobal

Just delete the GlobalSection(SourceCodeControl) ... EndGlobalSection and save the file.

The Solution User Options File (.suo)

I didn't find any real good solution besides deleting the file. But don't worry, VS.NET will create it back when you open the sln file.

The projects file (C# .csproj and VB.NET .vbproj)

Those files are XML based, so it won't really be hard to clean them. All you have to do is remove the following attributes on the main project node (which is named CSharp or VisualBasic):

• SccProjectName
• SccLocalPath
• SccProvider
• SccAuxPath

The setup projects files (.vdproj)

They are quite similar to the .csproj and .vbproj except on one point: they are not XML based. You'll have to remove the following lines :

"SccProjectName" = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
"SccLocalPath" = "8:..\\.."
"SccAuxPath" = "8:"
"SccProvider" = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

All the other stuff

Visual Studio creates a few files for managing the source code integration, so you'll have to delete those files:

• In the same folder as the .sln file, you should find a solutionName.vssscc.
• With the projects file, you'll have a projectFileName.projectExtension.vspscc.
• You will also find some vssver.scc and mssccprj.scc in the project directory.

If you use MS SourceSafe as your source "database", you'll also find a vssver.scc file in each folder: delete them all if you want, but I didn't have any issues for not having done so.

History

• v 0.9.3.0: Support for localhost-based asp.net projects
• v 0.9.2.0: VDPROJ support, French chars in project and solution support.
• v 0.9.0.0: First release, quite a few things yet to do.