If you use Emacs the vc interface is the same if you are using CVS, RCS or SCCS as your back-end source code control system. However, there is an addtional cvs-mode on top of CVS.
Petter
-- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
This bit is particularly ominous:
The most common reasons for data corruption are:
That's just un-f*#@king-believable. All network connections are unreliable! Repeait slowly to yourself "a distributed version control system that can be trashed because of a dropped network connection." Anybody with five firing neurons should know that's simply not acceptible -- and not all that hard to avoid! Database people have known how to deal with situations like that for 30 years. But not Microsoft. Sheesh.
We're not talking about just the operation in progress being lost. We're talking about the whole database becoming unstable. There's absolutely no excuse for that. Network connections drop all the time. Power fails. Computers crash. (Microsoft sure ought to know that!) People trip over cables and drive cars into telephone poles.
Any distributed system that absolutely depends on 100% reliable network connections was designed by an idiot.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! I HAVE a towel.
at
"toby" skrev i en meddelelse news: snipped-for-privacy@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
That is indeed very disturbing. I guess we have had good fortune for this long. But I see the possibility for terrible things to happen in the future to come. I had not googled around or searched for information regarding this issue, but I was just inspired by the original posting. However, all your answers have made me aware that there is something to look at here. And if the solution is stable, and yet cheap/free. I see a winner here.
fire"
Thank you, informative, amusing (in a strange deathwish kind of way) and scary information.
Ohhh yes, I am all for the knowledge of which tool is better. But plese note the small word "WAR". Unfortunately discussions about tools (especially MS tools) often tend to get out of hand due to peoples consistent disliking of MS, and I didn't want this to be 300 post argument over Bill, his companymethods or anything like that ;-) I just wanted to know the arguments for NOT choosing VSS. And as always you guys have what it takes. Good arguments, links to prove it and personal experience. Thanks a lot. This is why this group is my favourite newsgroup.
Say we should change our sourcecode control. What would be a better choice? It does not have to be cheap/free but this is of course good if it is, as I might have more luck getting it through. Also it MUST run on Microsoft Server, since I am not likely to be allowed to change entire company IT-philosophy :-) And if anything exists to convert between this new creature and VSS, it is all the better. I have been searching a little this night but has been kind of confused with all the frontends/tools etc that exist for the various free solutions. So any pointers are welcome.
Thank you all for all your valued inputs to this discussion!
Best regards Henrik
Another vote here for Subversion.
I have used VSS for years and have a few years experience of ClearCase. I am currently trying to migrate (by winning "hearts and minds"!) our dept to Subversion (from VSS).
I've never had any reliability issues with VSS myself, but I found it was weak in a few key areas. If you are new to version control then you probably won't know what I'm on about, but VSS is very poor when it comes to branching support. The more you use version control, the more you will come to appreciate good branching support :) Anyone who's ever tried to make a version controlled minor modification to an old (i.e. not "latest") version of software without interfering with the latest version of code in the database, using VSS will know where I'm coming from.
Also, in Subversion the check-ins are versioned "per change" rather than "per file" as in VSS. Much nicer.
I've been experimenting with Subversion for months and have been very impressed with it. There are still one or two things I find slightly quirky but that's the same with any new product until you get used to it...
R.
I certainly am in the UK and I'd be delighted to talk to you about it. I assume your number on the website is the one to call - when is good for you?
It's simple: Microsofts customers don't _expect_ software to work.
Working with Microsoft products over the years have lowered the customers expectations so far that you can walk up to them, poke them in the eye with a sharp stick, and they'll Say "thank you!" and write you a check for an upgrade to a sharper stick.
Yes, it is.
Yes it would.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! It's hard being
at an ARTIST!!
To finally answer your question, there is an SCC provider for Subversion:
At work we use VSS without exclusive checkouts. It works, but not great. Occasionally someone writes over someone else's changes, but it's rare. We've also never had corrupt databases or lost data even though the project is several MLOC and there's almost 40 developers banging on it (knock on wood), but almost everyone is fed up with the poor tools and poor performance.
Anyway, nowadays Microsoft recommend the new Visual Studio Team System for bigger projects, anyone have any experiences with it?
-a
I remember VSS from before it was a MS product and it was bad back then so I don't blame MS for anything.
I used to have frequent database corruption on older VSS versions but the one we're using now (6.0d) is fairly stable. The problems I see with VSS in its current incarnation:
- Unusable over slower network connections. Our offshore sites either make their own copy of the VSS data (horrible!) or use a product called "source offsite" or something similar.
- Limited features. VSS is missing features for anything beyond managing source trees for simple projects with a few users.
- Limited to MS users, pretty much. Lots of shared source projects use CVS or Subversion so if you use these types of projects along with Visual Studio and Eclipse projects (I'm describing my situation here) you're better off not using VSS.
Andrew
"Tom Lucas" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@proxy02.news.clara.net...
Any time during the day, on the mobile number on the site.
Steve (who will organise a chorus of "VSS is s**te" in stacked harmonies with the team at work for when the phone rings)
Why do you find that unbelievable? Is this the first time you have used (or considered using) a Microsoft product? :-(
To Microsoft's credit the above is also considered a flaw in CVS which SVN has dealt with. SVN intends to be a better CVS than CVS, not just a different solution for the sake of being different (and incompatible).
True. It was very easy to migrate "culturally" into SVN because on a superficial level it behaves very much like CVS - once you're in there you can really start to take advantage of the new features.
pete
-- pete@fenelon.com "he just stuck to buying beer and pointing at other stuff"
A design fault in CVS is hardly "to Microsoft's credit" ! It's also worth noting that the worst you can do to a cvs server by using flaky network connections is mess up your current check-in. If your connection dies while checking in a bunch of files, some might be checked in, some not, and perhaps one in the middle will be stuck half-way. But all your old files in the repository are fine, so you can patch things up again. In the VSS case, a messed up write can leave your *entire* database in tatters, if it happened to be in the process of updating the indexes. Of course, SVN gives you either all or nothing for a checkin, which is much better.
Far and away the world's toughest application of source code control is the sourceforge site. There are no doubt other sites with larger repositories, but no where else are there as many projects and as many users, ranging from the total newbies to wizards looking to use every feature of the system, and with network connections of all qualities over the world. They ran CVS for years, and are now switched over to SVN.
Yes, pretty much. VSS is the only Microsoft product I've ever used much -- and that was almost entirely via the SourceOffsite client under Linux. I'm a lucky guy.
True. CVS was just a better RCS, but SVN was clearly designed from the ground up with a lot thought and hindsight.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! This is my WILLIAM
at BENDIX memorial CORNER
One difference is that CVS started out life as just wrappers around the RCS commands. Both RCS and early CVS had no client/server model, and was intended to be used on local files directly; sometimes with networked file systems. Visual Source Safe on the other hand, was introduced at a time when source code control systems were much more advanced and people were more experienced using them.
(I have heard that Microsoft never used VSS much internally)
-- Darin Johnson
I've used VSS at several sites, along with PVCS, CVS, subversion, and maybe others.
VSS is not terrible. But it is very expensive, and back when I used it, it was highly biased towards using it in one building (or with very high speed broadband). There are/were extra cost solutions that claimed to make it work better over long distance and slow speeds.
But CVS and SVN are free, and with Tortiose both have easy to use GUIs for windows users. And both integrate into the usual free IDEs such as Eclipse and Netbeans. And we are using it (CVS) with IAR on a current embedded project.
I prefer free tools so I can spend the money on pizza and beer for the engineering staff.
I don't think it is important which source code system you use, but you have to use one. I use them even on my own stuff, which is all by definition one man projects.
-- Pat
It is, if you don't like data loss. The competition doesn't offer data loss as a feature.
I prefer them because they actually work.
You might as well blame them for being dumb enough to buy it. By putting the Microsoft name on it, they have foisted it off on far more unsuspecting customers that the original company could have.
I once worked for a company that migrated (despite my protests) from CVS to VSS. Apparently the engineers doing GUI development (for an embedded system) didn't like using the command-line interface to CVS. I pointed out that there were at least four GUI interfaces available for CVS at that time, but apparently they thought wanted an "official" GUI, rather than something a third party "hacked together". They also used the standard FUD about wanting a company to sue if there was a problem, though I've never heard of anyone succeeding at suing MS over a software failure.
Apparently they hadn't noticed (and didn't believe when told) that third party "hacked together" software is often much better than the stuff from MS.
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