# Microsoft Visual SourceSafe Tasks for ANT

# Microsoft Visual SourceSafe Tasks User Manual

by

- Craig Cottingham
- Andrew Everitt
- Balazs Fejes 2
- Glenn_Twiggs@bmc.com
- Martin Poeschl (mpoeschl@marmot.at)
- Phillip Wells
- Jon Skeet (jon.skeet@peramon.com)

2001/04/29

## Contents

- Introduction
- The Tasks

## Introduction

These tasks provide an interface to the Microsoft Visual SourceSafe SCM. The `org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.vss` package consists of a simple framework to support vss functionality as well as some Ant tasks encapsulating frequently used vss commands. Although it is possible to use these commands on the desktop, they were primarily intended to be used by automated build systems.

## The Tasks

vssget | Retrieves a copy of the specified VSS file(s).
vsslabel | Assigns a label to the specified version or current version of a file or project.
vsshistory | Shows the history of a file or project in VSS.
vsscheckin | Updates VSS with changes made to a checked out file, and unlocks the VSS master copy.
vsscheckout | Copies a file from the current project to the current folder, for the purpose of editing.

## Task Descriptions

## VssGet

### Description

Task to perform GET commands to Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.

If you specify two or more attributes from version, date and label only one will be used in the order version, date, label.

### Parameters

Attribute | Values | Required
--- | --- | ---
vsspath | SourceSafe path which specifies the project/file(s) you wish to perform the action on. You should not specify the leading dollar-sign - it is prepended by Ant automatically. | Yes
login | username[,password] - The username and password needed to get access to VSS. Note that you may need to specify both (if you have a password) - Ant/VSS will hang if you leave the password out and VSS does not accept login without a password. | No
localpath | Override the working directory and get to the specified path | No
ssdir | directory where `ss.exe` resides. By default the task expects it to be in the PATH. | No
serverPath | directory where `srssafe.ini` resides. | No
writable | true or false | No
recursive | true or false | No
version | a version number to get | No, only one of these allowed
date | a date stamp to get at
label | a label to get for

Note that only one of version, date or label should be specified

### Examples

>     <vssget localPath="C:\mysrc\myproject"
>             recursive="true"
>             label="Release1"
>             login="me,mypassword"
>             vsspath="/source/aProject"
>             writable="true"/>

Does a get on the VSS-Project $/source/myproject using the username me and the password mypassword. It will recursively get the files which are labeled Release1 and write them to the local directory C:\mysrc\myproject. The local files will be writable.

## VssLabel

### Description

Task to perform LABEL commands to Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.

Assigns a label to the specified version or current version of a file or project.

### Parameters

Attribute | Values | Required
--- | --- | ---
vsspath | SourceSafe path which specifies the project/file(s) you wish to perform the action on. You should not specify the leading dollar-sign - it is prepended by Ant automatically. | Yes
login | username[,password] - The username and password needed to get access to VSS. Note that you may need to specify both (if you have a password) - Ant/VSS will hang if you leave the password out and VSS does not accept login without a password. | No
ssdir | directory where `ss.exe` resides. By default the task expects it to be in the PATH. | No
serverPath | directory where `srssafe.ini` resides. | No
label | A label to apply to the hierarchy | Yes
version | An existing file or project version to label. By default the current version is labelled. | No
comment | The comment to use for this label. Empty or '-' for no comment. | No

### Examples

>     <vsslabel vsspath="/source/aProject"
>               login="me,mypassword"
>               label="Release1"/>

Labels the current version of the VSS project $/source/aProject with the label Release1 using the username me and the password mypassword.

>     <vsslabel vsspath="/source/aProject/myfile.txt"
>               version="4"
>               label="1.03.004"/>

Labels version 4 of the VSS file $/source/aProject/myfile.txt with the label 1.03.004. If this version already has a label, the operation (and the build) will fail.

## VssHistory

### Description

Task to perform HISTORY commands to Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.

### Parameters

Attribute | Values | Required
--- | --- | ---
vsspath | SourceSafe path which specifies the project/file(s) you wish to perform the action on. You should not specify the leading dollar-sign - it is prepended by Ant automatically. | Yes
login | username[,password] - The username and password needed to get access to VSS. Note that you may need to specify both (if you have a password) - Ant/VSS will hang if you leave the password out and VSS does not accept login without a password. | No
ssdir | directory where `ss.exe` resides. By default the task expects it to be in the PATH. | No
serverPath | directory where `srssafe.ini` resides. | No
fromDate | Start date for comparison | See below
toDate | Start date for comparison | See below
dateFormat | Format of dates in fromDate and toDate. Used when calculating dates with the numdays attribute. This string uses the formatting rules of SimpleDateFormat. Defaults to DateFormat.SHORT. | No
fromLabel | Start label for comparison | No
toLabel | Start label for comparison | No
numdays | The number of days for comparison. | See below
output | File to write the diff. | No
recursive | true or false | No
style | brief, codediff, default or nofile. The default is default. | No

#### Specifying the time-frame

There are different ways to specify what time-frame you wish to evaluate:

- Changes between two dates: Specify both `fromDate` and `toDate`
- Changes before a date: Specify `toDate`
- Changes after a date: Specify `fromDate`
- Changes X Days before a date: Specify `toDate` and (negative!) `numDays`
- Changes X Days after a date: Specify `fromDate` and `numDays`

### Examples

>     <vsshistory vsspath="/myProject" recursive="true"
>                 fromLabel="Release1"
>                 toLabel="Release2"/>

Shows all changes between "Release1" and "Release2".

>     <vsshistory vsspath="/myProject" recursive="true"
>                 fromDate="01.01.2001"
>                 toDate="31.03.2001"/>

Shows all changes between January 1st 2001 and March 31st 2001 (in Germany, date must be specified according to your locale).

>     <tstamp>
>       <format property="to.tstamp" pattern="M-d-yy;h:mma" />
>     </tstamp>

>     <vsshistory vsspath="/myProject" recursive="true"
>                 numDays="-14"
>                 dateFormat="M-d-yy;h:mma"
>                 toDate="${to.tstamp}"/>

Shows all changes in the 14 days before today.

## VssCheckin

### Description

Task to perform CHECKIN commands to Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.

### Parameters

Attribute | Values | Required
--- | --- | ---
vsspath | SourceSafe path which specifies the project/file(s) you wish to perform the action on. You should not specify the leading dollar-sign - it is prepended by Ant automatically. | Yes
login | username[,password] - The username and password needed to get access to VSS. Note that you may need to specify both (if you have a password) - Ant/VSS will hang if you leave the password out and VSS does not accept login without a password. | No
localpath | Override the working directory and get to the specified path | No
ssdir | directory where `ss.exe` resides. By default the task expects it to be in the PATH. | No
serverPath | directory where `srssafe.ini` resides. | No
writable | true or false | No
recursive | true or false | No
comment | Comment to use for the files that where checked in. | No
autoresponse | 'Y', 'N' or empty. Specify how to reply to questions from VSS. | No

### Examples

>     <vsscheckin vsspath="/test/test*"
>                 localpath="D:\build\"
>                 comment="Modified by automatic build"/>

Checks in the file(s) named test* in the project test using the local directory D:\build.

## VssCheckout

### Description

Task to perform CHECKOUT commands to Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.

If you specify two or more attributes from version, date and label only one will be used in the order version, date, label.

### Parameters

Attribute | Values | Required
--- | --- | ---
vsspath | SourceSafe path which specifies the project/file(s) you wish to perform the action on. You should not specify the leading dollar-sign - it is prepended by Ant automatically. | Yes
login | username[,password] - The username and password needed to get access to VSS. Note that you may need to specify both (if you have a password) - Ant/VSS will hang if you leave the password out and VSS does not accept login without a password. | No
localpath | Override the working directory and get to the specified path | No
ssdir | directory where `ss.exe` resides. By default the task expects it to be in the PATH. | No
serverPath | directory where `srssafe.ini` resides. | No
writable | true or false | No
recursive | true or false | No
version | a version number to get | No, only one of these allowed
date | a date stamp to get at
label | a label to get for

### Examples

>     <vsscheckout vsspath="/test"
>                  localpath="D:\build"
>                  recursive="true"
>                  login="me,mypass"/>

Does a recursive checkout of the project test to the directory D:\build.

Copyright © 2000,2001 Apache Software Foundation. All rights Reserved.