Labelling in Visual Studio for VSS

[Guest]

I'm working on a build environment for .NET application where the developers
are using visual studio and VSS. In order to pull only the changed modules
(and any required dependencies) I want to get a labelled version from VSS.

The developers use visual studio and the VSS integration so they don't
currently label the code (or are really aware that they are checking in and
out of VSS). Is there a mechanism in visual studio that will automatically
label the code when it is checked in by the developers? It would be fine if
it put the autoincremented (assuming this happens now) version number as the
label but I need to be able to identify the specific code to pull during the
build so I don't have to pull everything.

Another option would be to customize the automated checkin to prompt the
user for a label and label it automatically. Is that possible?

I appreciate any assistance...gj

 

[John Vottero]

I'm working on a build environment for .NET application where the
developers
are using visual studio and VSS. In order to pull only the changed
modules
(and any required dependencies) I want to get a labelled version from VSS.

The developers use visual studio and the VSS integration so they don't
currently label the code (or are really aware that they are checking in
and
out of VSS). Is there a mechanism in visual studio that will
automatically
label the code when it is checked in by the developers? It would be fine
if
it put the autoincremented (assuming this happens now) version number as
the
label but I need to be able to identify the specific code to pull during
the
build so I don't have to pull everything.

Another option would be to customize the automated checkin to prompt the
user for a label and label it automatically. Is that possible?

If you just do a VSS GET, it will only get the modules that have changed.
Labels are useful when you want to mark a point in time such as a release,
you don't really need a label for the most recent code.

 

[Guest]

What we are trying to avoid is building everything that has changed and try
to limit it to those things that the developers tell us are submitted for a
build. There may be other things that have changed and been checked into VSS
that are still work in progress and are not ready to be delivered. How do I
limit the VSS get for the build to those things that are deemed "ready"
without labelling?

 

[John Vottero]

What we are trying to avoid is building everything that has changed and
try
to limit it to those things that the developers tell us are submitted for
a
build. There may be other things that have changed and been checked into
VSS
that are still work in progress and are not ready to be delivered. How do
I
limit the VSS get for the build to those things that are deemed "ready"
without labelling?

Without labeling? I don't think VSS can do that. You can do that with a
label but, your programmers will have to take that extra step. When they
check something in, they will have to decide if it's ready for building and,
if so, label it "ready".

 

[Guest]

So the question is can the developer do the labelling via a function of the
visual studio integration with VSS or do they have to start VSS and label the
project using the VSS UI?

Thanks for your help with this John it's been very helpful.

 

[John Vottero]

So the question is can the developer do the labelling via a function of
the
visual studio integration with VSS or do they have to start VSS and label
the
project using the VSS UI?

I don't think you can do labeling in Visual Studio 2003. It probably
wouldn't be too difficult to create a Visual Studio macro that would execute
a SS LABEL command. I'm not sure how much effort you want to put into that
because everything changes with Visual Studio 2005 and SourceSafe 2005.
See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvsent/html/vssmap.asp

for some details on what's comming (note the new "OnAfterCheckin" event).

Thanks for your help with this John it's been very helpful.

You're welcome.