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?
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.