INFO: The Mssccprj.scc File and How Is It Used

When you work with a Visual Basic project in Visual SourceSafe, a special file is created in your working directory called Mssccprj.scc. This file can never be added to Visual SourceSafe. It stays in your working directory and stores important information used by the SourceSafe integration in Visual Basic.

The File Types Options tab in Visual SourceSafe sets options relating to the types of files you store in Visual SourceSafe. To get to the File Types tab, click Options on the Visual SourceSafe Explorer Tools menu, and then click File Types.

This tab has an option for Create SCC File. Create SCC File dictates when SourceSafe creates this file. Its default setting (*.vbp, *.mak) means that whenever you get or add a file with an extension of .vbp (Visual Basic 4.0 project file) or .mak (used by older versions of Visual Basic), SourceSafe creates the Mssccprj.scc file. This file is very important because without it, SourceSafe integration inside Visual Basic will not function properly.

If you are having problems with Visual Basic integration with Visual SourceSafe, Make sure the Create SCC File option is set. Also, to rebuild the Mssccprj.scc file, delete the old copy, and then regain access to the Visual Basic project. It will allow you to point to the existing SourceSafe project and will display this message: If you answer Yes, the Mssccprj.scc file will be rebuilt.

The Mssccprj.scc file is a text file. It contains information like that shown below. There is no reason for anyone to go in and manually make changes to this file. If a Visual Basic project is removed and destroyed in Visual SourceSafe, SourceSafe does not automatically delete the Mssccprj.scc file from the local working directory. This will cause some strange errors to appear.

The Mssccprj.scc file is only used by Visual Basic. Visual C++ and other development environments do not use this file at all. You may not want this file appearing in your Visual C++ directory. To prevent the appearance of the Mssccprj.scc file in your Visual C++ directory, remove the *.mak from this field. (This change should only be made if you do not use Visual Basic 3.0 .mak files.)