Multiple developers on a single project

Hi,

A team of six will be working a VB project. You all know what a hassle that's gonna be.

Is Visual Source Safe the sort of code repository I'm going to need? Does anybody have some favourites?

Cheers,
Ben

I think SourceSafe is generally the most popular choice. It certainly isn't 100% reliable though.

It has some issues with long file names and stuff like that.

By means of an example;
You set a working folder to a long path (ie with spaces), if you then double click on the vbp to open it, SourceSafe gets all confused and changes the working folder to a hideous 8.3 format.

Anybody else experience this?

All in all though, SS isn't too bad if you know about its little foibles.

SS has the other (dis)advantage of being an MS product so in theory it should handle VB pretty well, but as Homer Simpson said "In Theory Communism works".... ;)

Nathan.

Thanks for that Nathan,

In particular I want to know:

Does everybody work on the same copy of the project, or does every body 'check out' some of the project and then check it back in?

What are the issues with modifying the .vbp file? Here are some scenarios I'm worried about.

Say a user wishes to compile the code. The user needs to have access to the entire project ... must every body else stop work?

Say a user wishes to add a form to the project. What if somebody else is also making changes to the .vbp file?

Cheers,
Ben

OK, I'll attempt to answer these questions based on my knowledge of SS.

Does everybody work on the same copy of the project, or does every body 'check out' some of the project and then check it back in?

The latter. You check out what you want. So if you want to change some code in a module, you check it out (assuming someone else doesn't have it checked out) and make your changes. You would then need to get the other programmers to get the latest version of the file to keep them up to date (the Get Latest Version functionality is in SS).

Say a user wishes to compile the code. The user needs to have access to the entire project ... must every body else stop work?

They need to have access, but they don't necessarily need to edit the project to compile it. In that case, whoever wants to compile would just get the latest version of the code (after ensuring that everyone had checked in whatever changes they wanted included in the build) and compile it. Other people could still work on code that they didn't want included in the release as long as they didn't check it in. The Get Latest Version thing in SS retrieves the last copy that was checked in. So if somebody has it checked out and has made some changes and you get the latest version you won't get their changes unless they have checked it in.

Say a user wishes to add a form to the project. What if somebody else is also making changes to the .vbp file?

They would have to wait essentially, or ask the person to check in the vbp briefly whilst they add the form. Generally, you don't need to check out the vbp unless you are doing things like changing references or components or adding/removing forms & modules.


I would say that with what you are doing, you're best bet would be to only have people checking out what they need. SourceSafe lets you know who has what checked out and you can do things like compare what is checked out to your copy to see what differences exist.

All files that aren't checked out are marked as read-only so you shouldn't have problems with changing files that others have checked out.

Something else to a bit careful about when doing things like getting latest versions and checking out files is that you should probably exit out of VB before getting the latest versions and checking out and then re-load the project. Otherwise if you leave VB open and check out a file that is open and then save that file, there is a good chance that your currently loaded file will overwrite any changes that you have checked out.

Before you get too deeply immersed in SS you should run some simple tests with SS with things like that to make sure you don't end up losing important information. SourceSafe stores a history of the work you have done so you can generally recover code if you accidently do the wrong thing, but you're better to avoid these hassles where possible.


Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any other info. I am by no means an expert on the subject, but I have had a bit to do with SS. I'm sure there are others who can provide more help than I, but I'm happy to share what knowledge I have.

Nathan.

SourceSafe is probably the way to go from a pricing perspective, although there are other options: CVS, which is open source and has som nice internet enabled features, or Merant PCVS which is basically a more hardcore version of SourceSafe.

Read the SS manual before starting out - the setup can be a bit confusing, and if you get it wrong you can create an awful mess.

Generally, though, it's pretty good, although it does tend to have issues checking out files when there is a group of projects open, and sometimes it doesn't like it much when the code or form designer windows are open when you check out the file. But apart from that it seems to work OK (I've been using it for the last four or five years)

- gaffa

One more thing: Disable Multiple check-outs. This means a file can be checked out only by one user at a time. This will ensure that there are no conflicts when more than one user want to change a single file.

Also, make it a practice to enter comments about the changes made while checking files in.

And always get the latest copy before checking out any files.

Practical tips.

.