CodePlex – hardly any trouble at all, really

Well, by now there should be something visible here:

http://www.codeplex.com/xlvbadevtools

Which is nice.

Remind me why I decided to put the project on CodePlex again? Oh yes, Microsoft site, programming language, application, not SourceSafe, blah blah, blah.

I did try SourceForge first, I have to admit, but I couldn’t figure out how to hook up my local TortoiseSVN installation to their servers. I guess I failed. CodePlex seemed slightly easier to understand, except that when I tried to import a standard SVN structure it failed, telling me I wasn’t a proper person in Team Foundation Server (or whatever they call Son of Sourcesafe). From scouring the FAQ, discussion forums and whatnot, I determined that this was not a completely unheard-of problem and emailed support.

I had to wait a while, but a response duly came and they’d fixed it. Since it seems to happen a fair bit, you’d imagine they’d try to deal with the problem, but what do I know? The SVNBridge program, which acts as a sort of proxy SVN server so that local SVN software can talk to the CodePlex TFS setup, is now working, although there’s an extra intelligence test needed: you need to append a “_cp” to your username to get a valid TFS login. Strangely, when it wasn’t working, the software was doing that for me, but as soon as the server-side problem was dealt with, I had to type the extra bit myself.

Sneaky. I wonder if these barriers to entry are deliberate or incompetent?

Whatever. It’s there, it’s released and I’ve even logged a couple of obvious issues.

Next, I’ll try to put something together that explains the plumbing.