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What other solution do you propose?
This software is very good!
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There are *plenty* of alternatives. Some good, some bad. A few I can think of off the top of my head:
CVS
PVCS
ClearCase
It seems that from what's been posted here, VSS works fine for small projects and small numbers of programmers, but scales very poorly. I am somewhat surprised that MS doesn't offer a high-end version of VSS for serious programmers.
"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity." - Albert Einstein
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Unless you really hate yourself I wouldn't consider PVCS.
We use that at the moment and it actually makes SourceSafe look good.
It provides every exotic feature that you can think of, but it fails do the basic things correctly. When you do a fetch it doesn't check if you already have the current version of the file. So if you need only to update 2 files in a huge project you have to upload and rebuild the whole thing.
Also, only half works over a WAN.
Also, very buggy unintuitive client SW and just try and get them to fix any of their bugs.
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Seconded. I evaluated PCVS (one of the other devs was very enthusiastic about it) and couldn't believe how counter-intuitive it was.
Stability notwithstanding, when a VSS admin (since 1996, scarily) doesn't feel confident using a souce code control product without going on a training course it may just be a little counter-intuitive...
Anna ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
Homepage | My life in tears
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"Anna's just a sexy-looking lesbian tart"
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Trouble with resource IDs? Try the Resource ID Organiser Visual C++ Add-In
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Have you ever had any problem with a CVS server ?
If you had, you 'd never talk about it as a better alternative to VSS. It have the same (or about the same) problems... Thanks to some good "CVS clients plugin" for eclipse (I used it only on Java projects, VSS was used for any .net / C++ projects I ever worked on), we've messed up the files in the CVS repositroy directory and loosed almost a week of work (Yes, perhaps planning a backup once a week was not what you could have called secured, but...)
As far as I have seen, CVS (and obvioulsy PCVS which is even more difficult to use, lacking of any good tools) is not better than VSS, it's just full of differents design-mistakes. And I do appreciate the default behavior of VSS that requires you to check BEFORE doing any modification in your source code.
My true meaning is not to make use VSS or CVS or any other piece of software : that depends on your dev environment. But NO, CVS is not better than VSS, just different. And, in my opinoion, certainly not to better to be used on wide projects. VSS and CVS are good to use on 1 to 10 (perhaps 20...) peoples projects.
Michael CARBENAY
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I agree with you, I have never seen such a piece of "  sh*tty  " software.
Tomas
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Well, maybe a bit of an overstatement, but none of the ones I've seen are convincing.
We use SourceSafe and are looking at CVS, but aren't entirely happy with either. SourceSafe doesn't handle Unicode text well, particularly UTF-8, and CVS - don't start me! I could wax lyrical on how unpleasant it and WinCVS are in usability terms, but our key objection is its default handling of binary files - there's nothing to stop two (or more) people developing different versions of the same file which then can't be merged.
Although there seem to be various hacky configuration options which might mitigate this a bit (we're still investigating these), surely we're not the only developers who have to deal with a mixture of ANSI, UTF-8 and binary files and expect sensible default handling of all three?
Gavin Greig
"Haw, you're no deid," girned Charon. "Get aff ma boat or ah'll report ye."
Matthew Fitt - The Hoose O Haivers: The Twelve Trauchles O Heracles.
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Rational Clearcase - you can check in ANYTHING to it. It does not care.
We put documents, source files, bitmaps, resource files, etc. in five different written languages into ClearCase - it all seems to work just fine.
It has good merging, and developers can work independently in different branches on the same code base, and then merge together at the end. Merging can be a bit difficult if the sources diverge greatly, but for simple simultaneous enhancements and bug fixing, it is great.
I just mention it because everyone here seems to only talk about SS and CVS, I did not see any mention of ClearCase.
You can drive it from the command line or from its COM interface.
It integrates with Visual Studio IDE and the Windows Explorer.
C++/MFC/InstallShield since 1993
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just to say cc is not ideal too (surely price)
the biggest problem for me is mentioned msdev integration (not all options comparing to other access) and terrible refresh problems using it into dynamic view ('source was changed outside editor' messages without reason or 'posponed' refreshes (after build end you want to run and is asks for build, till run-request never asks, next explicit build often makes nothing)
t!
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 I can't believe anybody can like ClearCase. We had an office party after we got rid of it.
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LOL!
At my new job none of the developers "trust" it. The build manager and pm's are constanly sending us e-mail to get use it.
I have only been there a month and have had to rebuild or drop my view twice due to corruption. I think it is as bad as VSS.
Hey don't worry, I can handle it. I took something. I can see things no one else can see. Why are you dressed like that?
- Jack Burton
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I used ClearCase at my first job, and it was a royal pain to setup and start using it. Once we had it properly configured and figured out how to use the config specs, we could do anything we wanted.
I loved the fact that it was tightly integrated into Explorer and DevStudio, making it much easier for me to use. Local snapshots made builds faster, but if you were limited on disk space, you could just build over the network instead.
Bottom line, I wouldn't want to admin it, but I would love to be using it for CM again.
Jason
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Gavin Greig wrote:
SourceSafe doesn't handle Unicode text well, particularly UTF-8
CVSNT[^] can handle Unicode.
Gavin Greig wrote:
but our key objection is its default handling of binary files - there's nothing to stop two (or more) people developing different versions of the same file which then can't be merged.
True, CVS was specifically designed to always allow working as opposed to preventing work (hence "Concurent" in the name). But there are numerous methods to avoid getting in troubles with non-mergable files. With CVSNT the simplest would be to use the reserved edits, which will prevent accidental work on the same version. Combined with email notification for edit's and watches and with the commit notifications which will provide an ongoing information as the file is worked on and commited it makes a pretty good system to avoid problems with non-mergable files.
<center> </center>
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I couldn't agree more. While VSS suits my needs, I have quite a few wants. One of the biggest problems I've had is the whole disconnected case... if I develop on a laptop, then unhook from the network, I cna only work on what I've checked out (granted, I can work on other files, but it's a work around).
I joined in on an open source project to create a new source safe project, taking some key features from VSS, CSVNT, and Subversion. It was also going to include a bug tracking and task management application... all of which would eventually make up a suite of development tools. Unfortunately, the other two developers I was working with lost interest. If anyone would be interested in working on something like this, let me know. I'm game for a pay-product as well as open source.
-AC
-AC
MCDBA
http://www.aconnell.com
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The only good source control programs that I found are SLM and its successor, Source Depot, but both of them are developed and used internally by Microsoft. Nobody uses SourceSafe.
I just wished that Microsoft releases those to external parties. It just has every feature you can imagine and merging capabilities are awesome. Absolute automation and ease--Every checkin is automatically verified and backed out if there is a problem. But then it has to be because it has to handle the Windows source trees which is about a terabyte in size.
Thanks,
Wes
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Where the hell is info on SourceDepot?
I have just been googling for it, and all I see are some hints that it might be by Perforce, and was used to replace the older home grown version control system that the original NT programmers used.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
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No, CVS is the de facto standard for any company doing serious development work. Try doing multi-platform development with VSS. Or try having Ant run automated builds with VSS. CVS is the best version control out there; it's had a long history; it is open source and it works very well with open source. If your company is using anything other than CVS, you need to convince them to switch over to CVS.
cvs -q commit my/2.cents
Ron
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CVS???
I have worked with it and it's terrible!
What's happen when 300 programmer work on the same application???
Go and merge?
The right way is to use VSS.
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I have used VSS for a number of years, and was initially impressed by its features as it was a great improvement on no version control. I administer VSS for the needs of my colleagues and me and it suffers from several problems:
Corruptions - It corrupts roughly twice or thrice a year which can take several days of analysis to fix (OK I should run the analysis tools more often)
Structure - on our limited size server, it takes up a huge amount of disk space. The structure of the database files are split into hundreds and hundreds of small files that waste space given the large cluster size on our server
Integration - Making it too easy to check out/check in files can result in errors because it can be too easy to accidentally local changes that you have made on your local computer (though it is easy to switch the integration off via the registry). Integration-only projects for Access developers is also a headache for us.
Security - security is terrible. I once needed to hack the administrator password, and found it very easy, once I had looked at the password file. I was pleased then but also shocked.
WAN access - For us it is unusable over the WAN. It causes two much traffic and in consequence causes us real problems.
Apart from these points, it is great! The ability to run it via macros is a real plus. If only all the above comments could be addressed
MA
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Michael Andrew wrote:
(OK I should run the analysis tools more often)
Are you sure of this? OTOH, I think that you should never need to run such a tool 
Michael Andrew wrote:
Apart from these points, it is great!
If you look carefully to what you listed, what you need is a client-server version of SourceSafe. I've tried SourceOffsite, but it's too expensive, and has its limitations too. Now, I'm happy with CVS.
My latest article: GBVB - Converting VB.NET code to C#
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Daniel Turini wrote:
(OK I should run the analysis tools more often)
Are you sure of this? OTOH, I think that you should never need to run such a tool
I absolutely agree. MS should give us a proper database considering the cost of VSS. However MS cop out by stating that "Administrators should run Analyze.exe regularly to verify that no problems exist in their VSS databases"
Thanks for the suggestion. SourceOffsite does look like it could be a solution (and it does have a 30-day evaluation) or perhaps not, considering the comments of others.
One problem that remote programmers face is that the decision-making executives tend to either have 2 megabit connection speeds, or work on-site and so do not experience any speed or connection problems.
MA
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Michael Andrew wrote:
One problem that remote programmers face is that the decision-making executives tend to either have 2 megabit connection speeds, or work on-site and so do not experience any speed or connection problems.
No problem. Go to the firewall machine and drop their connection a couple of times. This will be enough to corrupt everything they are working on that's not client/server.
Alas, this is fun!
Kant wrote:
Actually she replied back to me "You shouldn't fix the bug. You should kill it"
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I'm guessing people have piped up about SourceOffSite but I thought I'd chuck in my tuppence worth.
Found it very good to start with. Much quicker than VSS (I think we used it over a VPN but I'm not 100%!). But later realised there were problems with checking in files - it said it had, but hadnt!
Possibly something to do with the integration with .NET though - I've found that using VSS I cant check things in directly through .NET. I can check out, but have to open the VSS app to check them back in again!
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Its damn slow on VPN.
Anand is here
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I've been using Perforce for a while now and I won't go back to SourceSafe...you can't make me!!! There's a free version if you are only going to be using it with one or two developers. It's awesome, and it has the SCC provider plugin for VS.NET.
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-Anna-Jayne Metcalfe on Paintballing
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