Customizing the code of CCNet : part 1 : Getting the source

In order to make alterations to the code, one must first have it ;-) This article will show you how to do this, step by step.

First be sure that you have a copy of VS2005 VS2008, not another version. You can use a copy of VSExpress 2008 if you do not have VS2005 VS2008 (choose the C# edition of the express editions). I do all my work in a virtual machine, this makes it possible to work with different versions of VS on the same physical machine. (We changed the format to VS2008)

OK, now we got our machine up, and VS2008 is installed, the next step is to download the source of source-forge. At the time of writing, CCNet is hosted in svn, so we must have a svn-client to get it. You can always download the source of a specific nightly build of ccnet, but making patches is far more difficult in that case. My favorite svn client is tortoise svn, which you can download here.
Installing tortoise svn is a breeze : install, next, next, finish ;-)
If you need help with svn / tortoise, there is great help at the site of tortoise-svn.

Next step is to actually get the source. First make a folder where the source will be pulled to, let's say c:\source\CCNet. Create these folders first.
Next right click on the folder CCNet, you get a dialog as follows :


Click 'SVN Checkout ...'
In the next dialog, enter the value below for the url and press ok :
https://ccnet.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ccnet/trunk


Now the source is in c:\source\ccnet


Now we got the source, we can start adding functionality in CCNet.
Next post will be on creating a simple publisher. Stay tuned ...