Getting Visual Studio to ignore source control bindings in a solution

Question

Is there a way to tell Visual Studio 2005 to just ignore source control binding when opening a solution? I sometimes need to load a solution for which I don't have access to the source control server, but Visual Studio insists on trying to connect anyway, meaning I have to click "temporarily work offline in disconnected mode" for every project in the solution (of which there are about 20) as it loads. For some reason, it also tries to check each project out immediately after I've told it to work offline, so I have to click past that dialog box too.

As I will never need to edit anything in this solution, is there any way I can open it and have Visual Studio just ignore the fact it has source control bindings in it?

Edit: Ideally, I'd like a way to do this without having to change the project/solution files. They change fairly frequently, so I'd have to redo any changes every time there was a new version (otherwise I'd just unbind them once and it wouldn't be a problem).

Thanks for the replies so far.

Answer 1

The source control bindings are stored in Visual Studio solution file (.sln). For TFS for example, it contains a global section for TFS information and the solution projects added to TFS. You can edit the solution file to remove these bindings manually. I would suggest making a copy of the solution file first. However, I would recommend removing bindins via Visual Studio. Open your solution and go through the offline scenario. Then go to File/Source Control/Change Source Control (VS 2008) to bring up the UI that shows you the source control bindings in your solution. There you can manage the bindings including unbinding them. Once unbound, the next time you open the solution, VS should not have a need to access the source control.

Answer 2

We don't run visual source safe where I work now, so I can't check, but I think you can delete or rename all files with extension of .vcss or something. The extension as a couple of s's in. You may also need to update your sln file but that can be done easily with a regex and a small custom utility.

Answer 3

Try opening the Options dialog (under Tools > Options.) From there you have a Source Control section, with Plug-in Selection as the first sub-item. If you set the "Current source control plug-in" to "None" you might be able to stop the auto-checking.

Answer 4

I've been looking for a way to disable Integration between SourceSafe 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. We are forced to use SourceSafe being in a corporate environment and all. SourceSafe is fine on its own if you treat it like a baby. As soon as you try to do anything approaching useful it starts to break. God forbid you try to use the integration with Visual Studio. Being that I didn't want the "Bindings removed" so that it doesn't confuse other devs on the team I needed to be able to tell Studio to ignore the solution and project bindings and continue on it's merry way.

I followed the registry hack suggested in the following post http://stackoverflow.com/questions/471056/removing-sourcesafe-integration-from-visual-studio-6

Studio did what I wanted...sort of. It removed the SourceSafe integration. However when I opened up a source controlled solution it asked me if I wanted to remove the bindings.
"the projects will be treated as not under source control"

No I don't want you to remove the bindings from the files, I want you to IGNORE them. This dialog pops up every time you open the solution/project file and there is no way around it.

My solution at the moment seems to have worked...for now.

File->Source Control->Change Source Control...->Disconnect

I hope this helps anyone else in the position of having to use SourceSafe but can't remove the bindings from the files themselves. WHY, Microsoft, WHY would you put the bindings in the files themselves? /rant