Vault and MS SCC API Compatability (to use with RoboHelp X5)

[stevehweb]

Hello all,

I am trying to implement Vault as the SCC provider with Macromedia's new RoboHelp X5 however, Robohelp refuses to play with Vault - even after recognising that Vault was set as the default SCC provider.

Macromedia says that RoboHelp X5 can use any source Control software that is compliant with the Microsoft SCC API. I assumed that Vault was SCC compliant because it works with Visual Studio.Net, but maybe not?

Any help or clarification would be appreciated. Is Vault compliant with Microsoft's SCC API?

Thanks, Steve.

[dan]

Yes, Vault is compliant with MSSCCI, but there are often problems with other IDEs, for a variety of reasons.

Contact me off-line about this - we'll probably need to setup a debugging environment to figure out what the problem is.

[stevehweb]

Hello Dan,

Many thanks for responding to my post regarding Vault SCC compliance and integration with RoboHelp.

After spending a few hours with the RoboHelp client, I was able to get the integration to work. It seems like the major issue was that the client would not correctly manage the request to "add a project to source control".

We were able to get it to work by:
- First creating the project locally in RoboHelp
- Uploading the local project to SC using Vault client
- Opening the project from SC using RoboHelp client
- Saving the new "RoboHelp Project control file"
- Uploading the newly modified project control file to SC using Vault client.

Thereafter, the RoboHelp client performs as expected.

Regards,

-Steve.

[dan]

Great! Glad you are up and running - thanks for posting your results for others to see.

[stevehweb]

In response to a further question asked about integrating Robohelp, here is a clarification on my somewhat sketchy notes for getting Vault working with RoboHelp X5...

The RoboHelp control file that I refer to in my original post is actually the project.xpj file. This file should contain SCC information to tell RoboHelp that it should initialize and integrate with the SCC Provider.

It seems hit and miss whether one can force Robohelp to insert the Vault SCC information into the Project file. If Robohelp does not sucessfully do this its-self, you can insert the entries yourself and then upload the modified file to Vault using the vault client. Either way, the following entries must be in the .xpj file and then that file must be uploaded to Vault in order to subsequently open the project from source control and have it managed thereafter by Vault.

The code to insert into the .xpj project file is as follows. Insert the code below (suitably modified with your own SCC settings) between the /PROJECTPROPERTIES and COMPILEOPTIONS element tags...

Code: Select all

	...
	</projectproperties>


	<miscproperties>
		<matchedpair>
			<name>vc::provider</name>
			<value>SourceGear Vault Client</value>
		</matchedpair>
		<matchedpair>
			<name>vc::database</name>
			<value>http://URL_OF_YOUR_VAULT_SERVICE</value>
		</matchedpair>
		<matchedpair>
			<name>vc::agent</name>
			<value>MSSCC</value>
		</matchedpair>
		<matchedpair>
			<name>vc::cookie</name>
			<value>$/PATH_TO_YOUR_PROJECT_FOLDER_IN_REPOSITORY</value>
		</matchedpair>
	</miscproperties>


	<CompileOptions>
	...

Hope this clarification helps.

-Steve.

[kcreech]

Steve really helped me out by going back and posting the details of his steps. For anyone else out there that might be trying to do this, here is a clarification on the http://URL_OF_YOUR_VAULT_SERVICE entry. It should look something like this:

http://"vault server"/VaultService|"Profile":"RepositoryID"

If you are using the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE you can see an example of this in the MSSCCPRJ.SCC file under the SCC_Aux_Path setting.

The Profile is any profile you have setup and you use during the sign-in to Vault. The Repoository ID is the internal ID for the repository you want to use. The only way I know of to find this is by looking at an existing project file (MSSCCPRJ.SCC) that connects to the repository you want or looking at the tblrepositories table in the Vault database. Of course, if you do the later make sure you are only viewing the data.

Hope this helps someone else and thanks again to Steve for all the research.

Ken