Using VSS Converter in TFS 2010 Beta 2

TFS 2010 Beta 2 has been out for a few days now, and I’ve heard of quite a few users hitting errors when trying to migrate their VSS databases to TFS using VSS Converter.  If you’ve hit the error message below, keep reading for a workaround that enables you to use VSS Converter from TFS 2010 Beta 2.

Symptom

TF60070: Unable to connect to the Team Foundation Server: 'https://TFSServer:8080/'. Please ensure that the Team Foundation Server exists and try again.

Workaround

With the addition of Team Project Collections in TFS 2010, the VSS Converter utility needed to have its connection string format updated to enable it to connect to TFS.  During Beta 2 development, we updated the tool so that it would accept the collection name as an input parameter.  The unfortunate part about this change is that we were not able to update the documentation for the sample migration setting file in time for Beta 2.  For the RTM release, we’ll be sure to have the walkthrough and other docs updated to include this new setting.

To workaround the issue, you’ll need to add a new attribute to the <TeamFoundationServer> node in the settings file.  Here is an example of what the setting would look like if you were migrating to the default collection:

<TeamFoundationServer name="myserver" port="8080" protocol="http" collection="tfs/DefaultCollection" ></TeamFoundationServer>

If during the configuration of TFS, you specified a different path than "tfs" you need to prefix the collection name with that path component.  Likewise, if you're not using the DefaultCollection, or want to migrate to a named collection, insert that part of the name after the "/".  If you are not using any path component (i.e. an upgrade scenario), then you will want to specify only the collection name, omitting the "/".