Where can I find information on writing a version control system that integrates with Visual Studio?

Question

Basically, I'm doing a lot with Visual Studio lately and in my quest to get a simple version control system that I could host myself, I just thought to myself: how difficult could it actually be to write some VCS that just supports the Visual Studio interface? (And which will be used by just one person, anyways...) (And which will be hosted on my own website as a web service or whatever.)

No, I'm not a beginner. I've been programming for over 30 years now so yes, I know it would be difficult, even for a veteran developer. I just like the challenge. And yes, I could just use one of the many existing solutions but sometimes it's just fun to re-invent the wheel. It's more just a challenge for my skills than something I really need. Just practice that could turn out to become quite useful.

So, to start with, I need a good definition of how Visual Studio 2008 communicates with a version control system. Writing code it the easy part. Knowing what it needs to do at a minimum is what I need to know.

So, any useful hints, tips and links?

Answer 1

Linus Torvalds apparently wrote Git over couple few weeks. It's responsible for managing the Linux Kernel source repository.

I, however, can't iterate enough that you would be much better off learning an existing version control system. The number of features are invaluable.

Finally, you can use local repositories for Subversion, so you can "host it yourself" with no problem. There are plenty of visual SVN interfaces for Windows if that's your hang-up.

Answer 2

I think you're attempting to do two things at once:

• produce a new version control system
• produce an interface to Vistual Studio for that VCS

I'd keep to one task at a time, since both are probably multi-year projects on their own.

So if you want to get a good, self-hostable VCS that matches your conception and is integrated with Visual Studio, then I'd search for a good, self-hostable VCS that matches your conception and isn't integrated with Visual Studio yet. Then add the integration. Of course, if you find one that's integrated as well, that would be nice, but it takes away all of the challange, doesn't it?

Apart from the problem becoming much more complex when you attempt to do both steps at once, I'd argue that it can seriously harm the design of your software if you try to implement backend and frontend at the same time.

Chances are that you run into a trap that a lot of software does where the UI and the logic is so tightly bound to each other that you can't easily change any of the two or even separate them out later on.

Answer 3

A simple VCS is not that difficult to write. Kernighan and Pike in their great book The UNIX Programming Environment describe a simple one built using diff and awk, which may be worth looking at (see Chapter 5).

Building a realistically useable one though is a lot of work, and something that requires extreme levels of testing. You have to have absolute trust in your VCS, otherwise you simply won't use it.

Answer 4

MSDN has a section in the Visual Studio SDK documentation on how to create a source code control plugin. This should give you what VS expects from the plugin.

Have fun.

Answer 5

You might want to try looking at the AnkhSVN source if you want a good example of how they do it with Subversion.