If you’ve been watching the Jira Plugin Library like a hawk, this post will come as no surprise to you. But in case you haven’t, I have an exciting announcement. We’ve just released a beta version of the JIRA-VSS plugin that provide a mapping between Jira Issues and Microsoft’s Visual SourceSafe. This has been a long-requested feature (created in October ’04, actually) for Jira, and we’re happy to finally be able to provide an solution.
The JIRA-VSS plugin works in much the same way that our other Version Control Plugins work: Jira gets a list of changes from your repository and searches through the commit messages for issue keys that it recognizes. It then attaches those commit messages to the issues in question. It gives better insight into the full lifecycle of an issue, as you can understand what was actually required to fix it.
We use this same kind of functionality with some of our projects. You can see how it works on the Developer Jira. Of course, in this case, we’re using Subversion and Fisheye, but the principle is the same.
So here’s where we need your help: we’re don’t use VSS for any of our development, so we haven’t been able to test this plugin with real-world data. That’s where you come in.
The JIRA-VSS plugin will eventually be a commercial plugin (just like our Jira Perforce Plugin), but during the initial beta period you can download and use it for free with a standard 30-day evaluation license. We’d like to get as much coverage, with as many data-sets, and in as many different environments as we can. So download the plugin and let us know what you find. We’ve set up a Jira project for your feedback.
Please give it a try, and report your issues. We’d like to get this production quality for you as quickly as possible.
P.S. We’d also like to know if there are many users out there using Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server for source control. If you are, and are interested in a source-control plugin, please let us know.
