PRB: Restoring an Archive of an Entire Database

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This article was previously published under Q173387

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SYMPTOMS

After you have archived an entire database with the SSARC utility and you try to restore it with SSRESTOR, you receive the following error:

The path $/ is already in use. Cannot restore path from archive file.

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CAUSE

The syntax you used was:

   SSRESTOR [-s path to srcsafe.ini] <archive file> $/

SSRESTOR attempts to create a new project in the target database, with the name of the project given in the SSRESTOR command. Because the root project ($/) will always exist in the target database, the restored root project cannot be created.

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RESOLUTION

To resolve this error, either:

Repeat the SSRESTOR command multiple times, once for each top-level project. -or-
In the original project, share the entire project tree to a new project, and then archive and restore this project.

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STATUS

This behavior is by design. According to the User's Guide (Appendix B page 219 for Visual SourceSafe 5.0), "if restoring attempts to create a duplicate file or project name, the restore fails."

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MORE INFORMATION

If, for example you have three top-level projects:

   $/first
   $/second
   $/third

Resolution 1

Run SSRESTOR three times, each time specifying the name of one of the projects as the last argument (for example, SSRESTOR archive.ssa $/first). There are two disadvantages to this method.

If there is a large number of top-level projects, this process will be tedious, and there is no easy way to automate it. Any links (shared or branched files) between top-level projects and will be lost. For example, if:

   $/first/sub_one/myfile.txt

is shared to:

   $/third/sub_one/myfile.txt

then the files will not be shared in the restored projects.

Links that are within the same project tree are maintained, such as:

   $/first/sub_one/myfile.txt
   $/first/sub_five/myfile.txt

Resolution 2

There are three steps in this resolution:

In the original database, create a new top-level project, (for example, $/root), then recursively share all top-level projects into $/root.
Archive $/root.
Restore $/root into the target database.

In this case all links at all levels are restored, the disadvantages of this method are:

With a large number of top-level projects, sharing them into $/root may be time consuming.
After restoring, you may want to move all the top-level projects back to being subprojects of $/, rather than subprojects of $/root. Again, this may be time consuming with a large number of projects.

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