Anyone use Visual Source Safe

[AndyHui]

Question: is it possible to allow people to check out only and not check in?

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: AndyHui
Question: is it possible to allow people to check out only and not check in?

Doesn't seem possible.
The different possibilities of setting access rights:

Might want to look at this too. (<- Far too long link)

 

[nord1899]

Originally posted by: AndyHui
Question: is it possible to allow people to check out only and not check in?

Don't think so. But I'm just curious why you would want to? Why would someone check out (reserve for adding a new version) but not check in?

 

[tgillitzr]

Originally posted by: nord1899

Originally posted by: tgillitzr

Originally posted by: nord1899
Charrison I have had the IT group at my office look over the VSS slowness. No one can figure it out.

And putting labels down on every change? Whoa, now thats crazy.

And I haven't found the command line tools that let me do things like this:
- Diff more than one file, and not necessarily in the same directory, of the version in SS and the version on my hdd. And then send this output to a file.
- Submit more than one file, again not necessarily in the same directory, all at one time.

One thing I wish it had was a state other than checked in or checked out. And in house source control that I used to use had three states for the files: checked in, opened, and reserved. Only when reserved could you submit the files. But you could open the files, which gave you write access, and the source control would keep track of them. But its not as harsh as checking out/reserving.

And I'm sorry, the most important thing is that atomicity of changes. Without it, any source control system is subpar.

Nord, we put notes in for every version checked in.... i don't see how that is a large issue.

Let me put it this way. I am making a huge change to the source code. It involves a bunch of files, lets say 20. Those 20 files happen to be in 4 different folders. I make the submission. Now say I screwed things up horribly and we need to back it out. At this point there would be three ways to do this, only 2 with VSS though:
1. Using the change number, roll back the files. Not possible in VSS.
2. Do a history, see all the files modified by me at a certain time. Roll those back.
3. If you are keeping track of changes elsewhere, say in a code review, refer to that to get all the files so you can roll them back.

Of course other examples apply here. Like integrating the change into another code branch/tree. Someone only grabbing that change from the source control to update it.

Now I put in comments in the change section. I work in support, where I write patches and bug fixes, so its second nature to me. But our developers didn't do this (and I scream at them occasionaly to make sure they do now). So figuring out what changes do what and what files were modified is a PITA.

EDIT: nevermind the last part about the user bit. Misread your post.

Valid points nord. We don't really use it like that, so its not an issue. We probably have a max of 50 files per client, with it usually being 15 or so. We use it for a lot of files, but on a much lower scale.

BTW, in the last few months the performance of VSS at work has increased significantly. Its fairly fast now. I'm not sure what they did, but could probably ask and find out.

 

[AndyHui]

Originally posted by: nord1899

Originally posted by: AndyHui
Question: is it possible to allow people to check out only and not check in?

Don't think so. But I'm just curious why you would want to? Why would someone check out (reserve for adding a new version) but not check in?

The analysts want to do that so they can control what goes back into the VSS DB.

What is your practice in terms of checking in files? Every night? After every compile?

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Btw, we've had the documentation people here suddenly getting told by the management to also start using VSS, and them just checking in and out PDFs and stuff with every tiny change. In 2 days time the database more than doubled. Please explain to those in charge in such a case that they are idiots and should go back to drinking coffee and pretending to hold important meetings.

 

[AndyHui]

This text vs binary file storage is going to be pain.

I see that it doesn't support unicode...which means all our source code with Chinese characters is probably going to have to be saved as binary right?

 

[nord1899]

AndyHui, what I would suggest is this. Come up with a list of features you need from a source control. You might need to research what is out there first to find out what source control can do, but I think you need a "must have" list. Then come up with a "would like" list. Then shop around.

Obviously one of your "must haves" is Unicode support for Chinese characters.

For me, a "must have" would be atomic changes.

I'm sure a google search or Yahoo! group can point you out to a bunch of source controls.

At this point, I wouldn't worry too much about the price of it. Just generated a feature list.

And regarding the PDF storage in VSS. That would be better done by document control rather than source control.