Migrate your data from VSS Server to Team Foundation Server

Question

Yesterday, I asked a question Migrate to TFS and the answer mentioned some very good tools which can be very helpful. Thanks to jwanagel. But I forgot to mention there the VSS server and TFS server are two different machines. And when you've both on different location it seems you would have to take a different path.

What would I have to do to migrate my Visual SourceSafe database which is on a different machine to a TFS Server which is on an another machine?

Thanks.

Answer 1

They can absolutely be on different machines. Just make sure the two machines can see each other.

In the config file for the vssconverter.exe utility, you'll see this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
 <SourceControlConverter>
   <ConverterSpecificSetting>
      <Source name="VSS">
          <VSSDatabase name="c:\VSSDatabase">
          </VSSDatabase>
      </Source>
      <ProjectMap>
        <Project Source="$/MyFirstProject" 
                 Destination="$/MyTeam_ProjectOne">
        </Project>
        <Project Source="$/MySecondProject"  
                 Destination="$/MyTeam_ProjectTwo">
        </Project>
      </ProjectMap>
   </ConverterSpecificSetting>
   <Settings>
     <TeamFoundationServer name="YourTFSServerName" 
                           port="PortNumber" 
                           protocol="http"
                           collection="MyTeamProjectCollection">
     </TeamFoundationServer>
   </Settings>
 </SourceControlConverter>

The area will specify where the VSS database is located. This will always be locally, since vssconverter.exe is run from the VSS server you're wanting to migrate from. If you look at the area, this is where you specify the TFS server address. The TFS address does not have to be the same machine name. As long as it is visible from the VSS server you're migrating from you will have no problems.

(I just finished a migration from a VSS server to a different TFS machine doing this.)

Hope that helps!