Visual SourceSafe 2005 on Linux

Getting Visual SourceSafe 2005 working on Linux was a little tricky. It required a lot of experimentation, and I did not keep exact notes. So, this is just a rough outline of how I got it working.

Start by getting the latest version of wine from git. When you configure it, install any missing dependencies and reconfigure. Then, build and install it.

Install ies4linux. Only Internet Explorer 6 is required. I used a base directory of $HOME/.wine when I ran the installation script:

./ies4linux --basedir $HOME/.wine

Then, I moved all of the contents of $HOME/.wine/ie6 into $HOME/.wine and deleted the ie6 subdirectory. If you plan on using the desktop icon, you will need to edit it to match the modified path.

Run winecfg and change the Windows Version setting to Windows 2000.

The Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 must also be installed. However, the installation procedure does not appear to work under wine.

So, run cabextract on the download and then run it on the netfx.msi. This extracts a lot of files with really long names. Look at the file whose name contains _INF_. In my case this was

FL_NETFXUSA_INF_92947_____X86.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8.

It contains a list of files and target directories.

Some of the target directories will exist in .wine/drive_c, others will need to be created.

Then, you have to find the files listed for installation into those directories. They will not appear under in the extraction directory with the names shown in the info file. Rather, they will appear with a name like the FL_NETFXUSA_INF_... file shown above.

Using it as an example, the short name would be netfxusa.inf. Simply copy those files into the appropriate target directory under the shorter name.

When I did this, at least one file was specified to be copied into two different directories.

Visual SourceSafe requires some fonts that are not normally installed for wine. I suspect it really needs Tahoma, I didn't try to narrow it down, I just copied my Windows\Fonts directory from my XP partition into the .wine/drive_c/windows/fonts subdirectory.

Copy the Program Files subdirectory from the VSS installation CD into the wine/drive_c directory. Then, run

wine $HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Visual\ SourceSafe/ssexp.exe

If everything goes well, Visual SourceSafe should display with some minor toolbar and menu issues. If you don't see a menu, pass your mouse over where it should be and the top-level items will appear.

You might want to copy that command into a script file or create a launcher for it instead of having to type that command every time.