Hello all,Does anyone have any advice regarding alternatives to VSS?I have used Rational ClearCase years ago so am well aware of VSS's problem areas, primarily it's lack of parallel development streams.Powerful though CC was, I found it it a bit "too powerful" (i.e. complicated) for the small team in my current job (the team where I used it was much bigger and globally located). I also found it rather unfriendly...I would ideally like something with a similar look/feel to VSS, but with a few additional features such as better handling of timezones and internet connections to the database (and parallel stream support).Regards,Richard.

And I'm sure you'd like other features, such as "works reliably without regularly running extra checks and backups". VSS is probably unique in the world of source control systems in that its developers always use something else.There are a fair number of systems around, depending on your requirements, but is one of the most popular choices (combine it with for a windows gui, or use one of the many other guis and client plugins available).

Alternatives to Visual SourceSafe?

Dave Hansen 20 years ago

Before Intersolv was Polytron (the P in PVCS).

Was very happy with it until the then-current owner of the system attempted to charge extortionate support fees (Approx. $300/seat/year, IIRC) at a PPOE a number of years (and three jobs) ago. Forced that employer to a completely different product (which I will neither name nor recommend).

The PVCS Tracker started life as DCS (Defect Control System) from a company whose name I've forgotten (ISTR a bug on a surfboard in their ads, though). It was a great product, the best defect tracker I'd used, before or since. Haven't used it in years, though.

Regards, -=Dave

Change is inevitable, progress is not.

Vote

Frithiof Andreas Jensen 19 years ago

And this is bad, why? In subversion it is per-design to allow working offline.

It is good for me because when I write my own stuff it's' offline, on a memory stick thus avoiding the naughty clause in my contract about the use of employer-owned storage facilities and network ressources is a transfer of ownership.

Vote

Michael N. Moran 19 years ago

Without getting into the working off-line issue, my point was that there is no "free alternative" that has this same feature.

Personally, I prefer a strict separation between my and configuration managment system, source code, and the tools used to manipulate the source code. When meta-data is introduced into the source tree working copy (view), tools which are not a part of the configuration managment system *may* be impacted by these directories and files. My ideological side finds that ... unappealing.

Then there is the extra disk space consumed, but that is becoming less of an issue as time progresses. However, there are times when I have multiple "views" of the same repository for different versions of different projects, and doubling the size of each can start looking like real disk space ;-)

Michael N. Moran (h) 770 516 7918 5009 Old Field Ct. (c) 678 521 5460 Kennesaw, GA, USA 30144 http://mnmoran.org "So often times it happens, that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key." The Eagles, "Already Gone" The Beatles were wrong: 1 & 1 & 1 is 1

Vote

toby 19 years ago

Except, as previously mentioned, svk...

Vote

Ignacio G.T. 19 years ago

Dave Hansen escribió:

I'm still using plain old 16-bit (MS-DOS) PVCS. We changed to RCS with projects that had to had more than 8+3 filenames. I'm proposing nowadays Subversion, which seems much more scalable, flexible, and robust.

There are some guys here using VSS for PCs stuff, but they *never* understood version control in the first place.

Vote

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required