RSS and SourceSafe

I while back, I wrote an application to generate RSS feeds from Visual SourceSafe databases. The code was set to expire a few months later, as we were considering building this capability into a product. A couple more times after that, I posted updated versions with a later and later expiration.

Well, I’m happy to announce that we’ve decided to release the source code for this application. It requires .NET 1.1, and build files are included for Visual Studio .NET 2003.

This really is a cool app…it runs as a Windows service, and generates RSS feeds based on the change logs in VSS. And now it’s free, unlimited, and ready for you to play with. :-) The copyright and license are included in the readme.rtf in the package below – basically, it’s an unrestricted modification and redistribution license.

download source: VssRssSvc.zip

21 thoughts on “RSS and SourceSafe

  1. Chris Monachan

    Excellent. Thanks for releasing it!

    This application is the reason I bought Newsgator. So that I could read all the checkin/checkout comments in Outlook.

    Reply
  2. D Rickard

    Come on, someone please post a link to a compiled version or explain a way to create one without owning Visual Studio .Net.

    Reply
  3. J Whitman

    I downloaded the source, and compiled, however the interop library Interop.SourceSafeTypeLib.dll is missing. Is this supposed to be included in the project?

    Reply
  4. Aidan

    Hi

    Nice little service that solves our issue of being able to search on the comments fields.

    I hit one issue though. In GenRss.cs I kept getting a “Error loading resource string” error on the line “string file = ver.VSSItem.Name;”.
    It’s a known bug with VSS and I’ve just worked around it by surrounding the line with a try-catch.
    (I’m more VB than C# at the mo)

    Just thought I’d share the info.

    A.

    Reply
  5. Aravind

    Hi, I was always in search of such an application. I downloaded this and configured. However, I can’t see anything under c:\inetput\wwwroot\vss.xml?

    Can any one tell me how to use this app/service?

    Thanks.

    Reply
  6. Kevin Tomes

    Hi

    Im a bit confused as to how exactly i should install this app? I have saved the zip file and extracted files to a local folder, but i was expecting some MSI or self extracting binary?

    Any help much appreciated, as it looks a great app…

    Reply
  7. Kevin Tomes

    Thanks gregr – all downloaded and compiled, looking forward to playing around with this – looks like it could be just what we need!

    Reply
  8. Kevin Tomes

    Hi again – ive installed it and got it all set up on my system – how does the app pick up the info in the config.xml file?

    Also, where does it write it to?

    Reply
  9. gregr Post author

    @Kevin – the output path where the feeds will be written is specified in the config file. And the config file should live in the same directory that you put the binary.

    Reply
  10. Kevin Tomes

    Thanks Greg – does the output have to be an XML file, or can i write to a MS word document etc?

    Reply
  11. Kevin Tomes

    Ok – i’ve edited the config.xml to write to a .xml file as below –

    C:\VSSRSSFeed\wwwroot\vss.xml

    Presumably now this xml file should have entries made when there is activity in the VSS database?

    Apologies if im being dense – tis is all very new (and exciting) to me, and im learning as i go along.

    Reply
  12. JF

    That tool really looks interesting, but I am currently unable to build the source page.

    Can a compiled version (complete setup including the server) be shared directly?

    Thanx

    Reply

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