R – Using Subversion in conjunction with Visual Source Safe

continuous integrationsvnvisual-sourcesafe

The shop I work in is in the process of phasing out Visual Source Safe and migrating to Subversion. I've set up a continuous intergration server using Subversion. From my current understanding of how SVN works locally, it stores hidden metadata in each directory that has been downloaded from the repository. My question is:

  1. Is it possible to add these hidden metadata directories to a project's Visual Source Safe repository without impacting how VSS manages the project? The thinking behind this question is that if I can add the SVN metadata into Visual Source Safe, then it would be a trivial task for the shop to continue using VSS for local development but then commit the changes to SVN which would allow the continuous integration server to build and version the code. Thanks for any feedback you might provide!

Best Answer

Putting the SVN metadata into SourceSafe might result in a problem for SVN, because SourceSafe makes the files read-only once they are checked-in. I'm not sure if this is OK for SVN.

..but after thinking some more: you don't want to put SVN metadata into SourceSafe, because this metadata belongs to the local SVN working copy and should therefore not be shared with other developers.