How to: Incrementally Migrate to Team Foundation

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This topic describes how to do an incremental migration if you want to migrate your Visual SourceSafe database in phases or if your migration was interrupted and you want to resume migration from where it stopped. Migrating a Visual SourceSafe database in phases ensures that users can continue to use Visual SourceSafe while migration is in progress. During incremental migration, the converter will only migrate the delta of changes that were not migrated previously.

Limitations on Incremental Migration

Be aware of the following limitations that apply when you start incremental migration and continue until all phases of incremental migration are finished.

  • You must not change the existing mapping of Visual SourceSafe folders to Team Foundation version control folders. Also you must not add or remove mappings.

  • Do not perform destroy, purge, archive, or restore activities on the Visual SourceSafe database.

  • Do not use the migrated Team Foundation version control folders.

Recommended Disk Space

Before you begin migration, check that you have enough disk space to complete the migration. In general, VSS converter needs approximately 5 gigabytes of disk space for working with SQL Express and for generated log files. Also VSS converter downloads files from the VSS database during migration. You should have enough disk space to handle downloading the entire VSS database.

Required Permissions

To perform this procedure, you must have administrative permissions for the Visual SourceSafe database that you will migrate. For more information, see "How to: Assign Project Rights" at the Microsoft Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=99103).

You must also be a member of the sysadmin server role for SQL Express. By default, you are a member of the sysadmin server role if you are a member of the Administrators security group on the computer where SQL Express is installed. For more information, see "sysadmin" (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=60405) in the SQL Server 2005 documentation.

To migrate in phases

  1. Ask users to stop using the Visual SourceSafe database.

  2. Copy the Visual SourceSafe database to a different computer that is dedicated to performing the migration.

  3. Inform Visual SourceSafe users that they can continue to use the Visual SourceSafe database.

  4. Start normal migration on the copied Visual SourceSafe database on the migration computer.

  5. Wait for migration to finish.

  6. When migration is completed, stop users from using the Visual SourceSafe database. Copy the Visual SourceSafe database to the migration computer.

  7. Make a backup copy of the report file generated by the previous migration so that you have it for future reference.

  8. Restart migration on the copied Visual SourceSafe database. The VSS converter will automatically determine that this is an incremental migration and start migrating changes that occurred after the first migration.

    1. On the Start menu, click All Programs, and then select Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio Tools, Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt.

    2. At the command prompt, type the following command, using the same settings file that you used during the previous migration:

      VSSConverter Migrate settings.xml

      Tip

      Use the /? switch to view the available command-line options.

    3. The converter automatically detects that this is an incremental migration, and it prompts you to confirm you want to do an incremental migration. Press Y to confirm that you want to do an incremental migration.

    4. The converter tool displays the migration status. When the conversion process finishes, the tool saves a post-migration report in the current directory. You can use Microsoft Internet Explorer to view the file for details.

    5. When you are prompted, provide the password for the Visual SourceSafe admin user.

  9. When you have completed all incremental phases in migrating the Visual SourceSafe database, you can switch users over to the migrated source on Team Foundation version control.

To restart migration after migration is interrupted

  1. Resolve the problem that caused the migration to be interrupted.

  2. Make a backup copy of the report file generated by the previous migration so that you have it for future reference.

  3. Follow step 8 in the previous procedure, "To migrate in phases."

See Also

Tasks

How to: Create a Settings File for Source Control Analysis and Migration

How to: Prepare your Visual SourceSafe Database for Running the Converter

Walkthrough: Preparing to Migrate from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation

Walkthrough: Migrating from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation

How to: Migrate from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation