Visual Source Safe?

[peterchen]

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

Repo-browser?

Sorry, I meant "figuring out how to use it by exploring the UI".

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

But why??

No Merge maybe. Even with better merge tools than VSS builtin, it's still a source of mistakes.

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[Anna Jayne Metcalfe]

SourceSafe works well enough for small projects, provided you properly manage the database. For large databases, it's simply too fragile, and it's sadly lacking in its implementation of features such as pinning and branching is pretty poor. For all its many flaws, one thing I'll say in VSS's favour is that the UI is straightforward and easy to pick up. It's also been largely project (rather than file) orientated since day 1 - something that took a long time to become the norm among SCC systems. SourceGear Vault is a far better alternative if you value your data and are comfortable in the VSS UI.

Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"

[Stuart Dootson]

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

peterchen wrote:

Get-Edit-Merge?

The one and only way...

Not necessarily. With normal coding, if you're a one (or even two or three) person team, then exclusive checkout is fine. The other case where exclusive checkout is fine is if you have a highly cohesive architecture, with work allocation split along architectural lines. Then, it's likely that the people working on the team won't have checkout collisions.

[Stuart Dootson]

I've used it a lot - I'd use it for small teams (two or three max). And also, don't put it on a network share...I've only ever had corruption when my SourceSafe database is on a network share. I like it when using VS2003+, because of the integration. However, for my team at work, I'm planning on us moving to Subversion in the New Year - we've got about 10 people on the team, and I don't trust VSS for that many people. I've used Subversion on OS X and find it OK to use. The other SCM system I've used much is Dimensions[^], when working on our embedded systems teams. It's a bit heavy weight, though!

[Stuart Dootson]

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

VSS required you to lock files in order to edit them

It doesn't mandate exclusive checkout anymore.

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

If you have a conflict due to contradicting checkins

Of course, if you do use exclusive checkout, then conflicts aren't a problem :-D

[Jorgen Sigvardsson]

Stuart Dootson wrote:

Of course, if you do use exclusive checkout, then conflicts aren't a problem

Conflicts of interest... ;)

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[Stuart Dootson]

I wish I had Greasemonkey+CPhog for Camino[^] - I use Camino because Firefox takes so loooooong to launch on my iBook - but I do miss CPhog...

[Anna Jayne Metcalfe]

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

Last time I checked, VSS required you to lock files in order to edit them.

It doesn't. There's an admin option to determine whether checkouts are exclusive.

Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"

[Jorgen Sigvardsson]

That option must've become available after I ditched it.. Anyway, the loss of code was what made me ditch it all together. (I rarely get really angry, but after having lost a days worth of code, smoke tends to come out of my ears...)

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[zjspeed]

Colin Angus Mackay wrote:

We have Team System at work...

Would Team System be a good choice for a team of two developers writing large and small VB.NET web and Windows applications?

[Mike Dimmick]

You'll probably get along better with SourceGear's Vault[^]. It's intended to seem familiar to VSS users. You can use it in either 'VSS'-like mode, where files are read-only until checked out, and checking out takes an exclusive lock to prevent others checking out, or alternatively in 'CVS'-like mode where all files are writeable and checking out isn't exclusive (and in fact isn't really necessary). Different users can use different options - my colleagues almost all use VSS mode while I use edit-merge-commit. Speaking of merge it's only an issue if two developers actually edit the same source file at the same time. Instead of preventing one developer from working, as happens with exclusive locks, developers have to integrate the changes from the first checkin before they can commit. Often, though, the two developers have not made changes on the same lines, so the automatic merge gives the right results. If merge conflicts are happening frequently, you maybe need to consider whether the physical layout of the code is correct, or whether the work should be divided differently between developers.

Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder

[Mike Dimmick]

Stuart Dootson wrote:

The other case where exclusive checkout is fine is if you have a highly cohesive architecture, with work allocation split along architectural lines. Then, it's likely that the people working on the team won't have checkout collisions.

But then they won't have merge conflicts either, and the explicit checkout step just becomes annoying.

Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder

[zjspeed]

Seems many here use and love Subversion with Ankh and Tortoise. What are the advantages and disadvantages with the others mentioned: SourceGear's Vault[^] and Dimensions[^]?

[zjspeed]

So, hardly anyone likes Visual Source Safe. Does anyone know that the 2005 version isn't bug-free? Also, is MS Team System any good? ...or any good for only two developers?