What has superceded SourceSafe?

[simonm]

I know this must seem like a stupid question but, in the .NET world, what application has replaced the role that SourceSafe used to provide in Visual Studio 6?

I just can't seem to find out...?

[Shaggy Hiker]

As of 2005, we're still using SourceSafe with VisualStudio. It hasn't gone away, as far as I can tell.

[simonm]

So are we but it's starting to seem so old and dated. Is there nothing better?

[gep13]

Hey,

SourceSafe is definitely still around, however, in my opinion, there are definitely better options.

You might want to think about using Subversion in conjunction with VisualSVN.

Having said that though, if you are working in a company, try and get them to fork out for Team Foundation Server, it is VERY nice!!

Gary

[techgnome]

Team Foundation Server ...

However, source safe is still running good and strong. The IDE supports both - in fact, I thing it will also support subversion and others too, but I'm not 100% sure.

-tg

[ntg]

I'll second Subversion. We've been using the VisualSVN server and the client (comes as a VS addin) for some time now, without any problems. You can manage without the client, but I think it's worth the buck to get it.

[jmcilhinney]

SourceSafe is still Microsoft's single-user to small team solution. Team Foundation Server is obviously targeted at teams but the price makes it out of reach for many/most small teams.

We've recently switched to Subversion here at work too, and finding it does a good job. We use TortoiseSVN for Windows Explorer integration and AnkhSVN for VS integration. VS exposes an interface designed for source control. SourceSafe was the first to implement it but any source control provider can do so.

[gep13]

Hey jmcilhinney,

How are you finding AnkhSVN? I read some bad reviews about it, that is why I recommended work fork out the money for VisualSVN.

Gary

[simonm]

So Subversion is good then is it? In what ways is it better than SourceSafe? I have found that SourceSafe is getting quite slow on our system. We only have a team of five developers but it's performance is really beginning to suffer.

Also, does Subversion have a command line interface?

I must admit that I haven't used any source control integration after being put off by using SourceSafe with VB6.

[gep13]

Hey,

In terms of performance, I find that Subversion is far superior, I have no facts to back that up though

Yes, Subversion has a command line interface, but I find that TortoiseSVN does everything that you would need it to do.

Gary

[jmcilhinney]

Hey jmcilhinney,

How are you finding AnkhSVN? I read some bad reviews about it, that is why I recommended work fork out the money for VisualSVN.

Gary

The only issue I've had with Ankh is that its latest release version was broken by the latest release of Tortoise, but that's not really an issue with Ankh.

[jmcilhinney]

So Subversion is good then is it? In what ways is it better than SourceSafe?

One of the main motivators for us was the fact that files are not locked by default so multiple developers can edit the same file at the same time. Merge conflicts are relatively simple to handle if and when they occur but regular commits tends to avoid conflicts for the most part. No more not being able to work because someone went home and forgot to check in a file.

[gep13]

Good to know.

This is the article that I originally read about the different SVN integration options:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet...rol_VSNET.aspx

And I was put off by this statement:

the most common complaints with this beast are that it is slow on the projects with a lot of files, it has an unintuitive logic of how to update the files and one should be closely familiar with it to do what you want. If you aren't afraid of a challenge – AnkhSVN is your choice. For others with less free time on their hands – consider alternatives.

Gary

[ntg]

So Subversion is good then is it? In what ways is it better than SourceSafe?

We've been using SourceSafe for 7 years. I had a lot of reasons to switch to Subversion.

* Subversion is a true source control system, whereas SSafe is mostly a client-server implementation. I had to go out and repair SSafe several times, and I never figured out the reason why the SSafe files were corrupt (our DB was about 1 GB at that time). I never had any problems with Subversion, which treats user actions like commits as a transaction.
* I could never trully enforce security with SSafe, simply it was based on the SSafe API.
* Backup is a breeze with Subversion.
* Source control database is smaller with Subversion.
* We can now access the repository over the internet, without resorting to third-party solutions or a VPN.
* Even when using https for the coms protocol, Subversion is faster on most operations.
* Subversion integrates with our bugtracker. And I can also integrate it with whatever else comes to mind by using hooks.
* Tagging/branching is real easy and natural.
* The command line interface to Subversion actually works very well, so I can have Subversion-based build actions for our production builds. SSafe was very moody on this particular item, especially if you had labels in the database.
* It's easy to add almost anything in Subversion - Tortoise is a great piece of work.
* It's trivial to resolve conflicts and I can have more than one devs work on a single solution. SSafe supposedly added the capability to have multiple checkouts but it was clunky as hell.
* Last, but not least, Subversion is being used by a lot of people. It keeps improving constantly and you can find lots of forum-based support.

We've been running on Subversion for 9 months now and I've become a big fan. My only real problem was migrating from SSafe to Subversion but I wrote a toolie to do it and that was that.

[gep13]

* Subversion integrates with our bugtracker. And I can also integrate it with whatever else comes to mind by using hooks.

Out of interest, what bug tracker do you use? I have used Trac in the past, which integrates well with Subversion.

Gary

[simonm]

Question, can Subversion be used with VB6 as well?

[jmcilhinney]

Question, can Subversion be used with VB6 as well?

Subversion can be used with any files at all. It's not specifically linked to VS.NET. It's just AnkhSVN that provides a VS interface to Subversion. Whether or not there's a VB6 add-on for Subversion I don't know, but you can still use TortoiseSVN or the like regardless.

[gep13]

I know that VisualSVN works with Visual Studio 2003, 2005 and 2008, I don't think it works in VB 6 though.

Gary

[simonm]

Not being easy to migrate from SourceSafe is quite a big problem for me too...

[gep13]

How do you mean?

It is a very simple switch from SourceSafe to Subversion.

Simply get the latest version of your code from SourceSafe, and then do an import into Subversion.

You will not be able to take over the updates/check ins/comments that you have in your SourceSafe, but you can always keep the SourceSafe archive available so that you can check on changes, this is what we did.

Gary

[simonm]

That's what I mean. Being able to see the history in Subversion. But I suppose you are right; I can just keep sourcesafe on hand to view history when needed.

[gep13]

Yip, it is not an ideal solution, but it worked for us, as the advantages that Subversion gave far outweighed the time it took to load up SourceSafe to check for history.

Gary

[ntg]

Out of interest, what bug tracker do you use? I have used Trac in the past, which integrates well with Subversion.

This one. Nothing fancy, but real light.

Not being easy to migrate from SourceSafe is quite a big problem for me too...

I've written this to help me with the migration. Latest version migrates files, history, labels, author/date properties and comments.

[gep13]

Hey,

I didn't know about BugTracker.Net, thanks for that. And it looks like VSS2SVN will be very useful, good work!!

Gary