February 07, 2003
Why Not to Use Microsoft Visual Source Safe

Related to a rant I posted on my own site a while back about the lack of decent Version Control for the Microsoft world, I found an interesting article entitled Visual SourceSafe: Microsoft's Source Destruction System. I've heard some stories about VSS from someone who worked with it, and it had me both laughing out loud and shuddering.



Posted by Arcterex at February 07, 2003 04:26 PM
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Yeah. I've used VSS and all I can say is... yeah.
I could even deal with the slowness if it wasn't for the fact that source DB on the server likes to "need repair" for no reason all the time.

And the lack of branching support really sucks for reasons the link mentions. Doing a minor fix to a released version (of a web app) is WAY more work intensive than it ought to be when you're in VSS. We've always had to (shudder) fork the tree manually by checking in new copies in new folders.

And of course all the extra files and folders doesn't help the stability.


Posted by: Adam V on February 9, 2003 12:55 AM

VSS is absolutley the best source control system. I've been using it for 7 years on very large projects (large teams), without the slightest problem. The branching support is excellent. If you want to see a nightmare, try CVS. NOw, that's a code destruction system. I've known 3 people who quit jobs where they had to use CVS.


Posted by: Bruce O'Reilly on June 25, 2004 11:05 AM
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