Something Technical: Using Tortoise on Visual Studio 2005

When I transferred in this company, I asked around for the source control they are using. They were using

SVN and Tortoise. Well, I was glad that I was familiar with Tortoise, but using it for Visual Studio 2003?

I was used to Visual Sourcesafe 2005 (VSS). VSS works will for Visual Studio because the controls are on

the Visual Studio IDE already. When using Tortoise, I would have to open a separate window, for Explorer,

to Check-In, Update and Lock a file while the VSS Commands is already part of the Visual Studio IDE.

I searched the internet for solutions and found one that gave me a complicated instruction which I finally did able to accomplished. So I made another example of how to attain a command inside the Visual Studio IDE without having to open an Explorer to manipulate the source control:

Hope this will be easy for you:


1. Go to Tools->External Tool

2. Add The ff:
Title: Update
Command: C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe
Arguments: /command:update /path:"$(SolutionDir)" /notempfile

Title: Log
Command: C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe
Arguments: /command:log /path:"$(SolutionDir)" /notempfile

Title: Check for Modification
Command: C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe
Arguments: /command:repostatus /path:"$(SolutionDir)" /notempfile

Title: Lock
Command: C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe
Arguments: /command:lock /path:"$(SolutionDir)" /notempfile

Title: Revert
Command: C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe
Arguments: /command:update /path:"$(SolutionDir)" /notempfile

Title: Commit
Command: C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe
Arguments: /command:update /path:"$(SolutionDir)" /notempfile

3. Customize your toolbar by right clicking on any part of the toolbar.

4. Go to Toolbars Tab and Click New.

5. Name the toolbar as Tortoise.

6. Click on the Commands Tab and select Tools from the Category. (The commands added will be named as External Command N. If you cannot locate the commands you just added, you may close the Customize Dialog Box and count where the command was place then do the Customization again.)

7. Drag the Commands to the New Toolbar.


----Placing Icons


8. After all of the Commands are placed, click Rearrange Commands and select Toolbar. Select Tortoise from the dropdown menu.

9. Right click the first image below and select copy (use Firefox!). On the VS IDE, select the Control for Update, click



Modify Selection, then select Paste Button Image. You may need to edit the image if there are black spots.

(To edit, select Modify Selection -> Edit Button Image). Make sure that on the Modify Selection, the Default Style is selected. Do the placing of image for all controls.

10. That's it, open the copy of your project that is connected to SVN.


I'm out!