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The Future of Visual SourceSafe

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A few months ago, I mentioned in Roadmap
for SourceSafe and Beyond that the SourceSafe feature team is planning
to do more than just fix bugs in the next release of VSS.  I did not provide
too many details.

I can now confirm that a new version of Visual SourceSafe will be included in
the Whidbey release of Visual Studio. 

Here are a handful of previously-unannounced features and feature enhancements
that you can expect to see in the next version of Microsoft Visual SourceSafe:

· Remote
Access -- The new version of VSS will support remote access through
firewalls via https.  This is similar to an Outlook 2003 feature that enables
people to access mail outside the firewall, without RAS.  Remote access makes
working from a remote location much easier. This includes remote teams (for example,
with offshore development) as well as simpler scenarios like telecommuting or doing
development work while traveling.

· Performance,
Scalability, and Productivity --
The new version of Visual SourceSafe will include improved performance and scalability
for large projects and will make common operations faster and asynchronous, so you
can start working more quickly on large projects and be productive while source control
transfers are taking place.

· Other
New Features -- SourceSafe Whidbey will include improved merging
UI, support for Unicode file content viewing and merging, re-vamped source control
for web service and web site projects, and a “check out local version” feature.

· Future
Announcements -- We will provide more information about the next version
of SourceSafe in the coming months.

Stay tuned.

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Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2003
    Seems that Visual Source Safe is not forgotten at all. Hopefully we will also find features like: basic bug tracking and feature request management and a better storage system (SQL or MSDE maybe), active directory user integration, ...

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2003
    I would love it if offsite performance was improved, and it looks like it will be. Will it be faster (or as fast) as SourceGear SourceOffsite.

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2003
    Thanks for the update! I'll be looking forward most of all to the remote support, though I'm certain I'll also appreciate the improved merge UI as well.

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2003
    Hi Korby, nice to hear about Unicode support. Can you tell us anything about enhancements of the general GUI (not only the merge UI) of the Visual Sourcesafe Explorer? The current GUI seems to be designed for 640x480 screens and 8.3 filenames. Resizable dialog boxes would be really nice, but PLEASE at least make those dialogs larger (and wasn't there at least one listbox or treeview without a horizontal scrollbar?)

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2003
    OK, simple answer: I belive it when I see it.Dont take me wrong, but I have heard the mantra of somehting ocming for a way too long time in this respect. SourceSafe has been the black sheep inVS.NET for so many years I dont really remember.So waht does this post do? Give me some hope and keep me away from buying into Vault for another month or two. Definitly. Make me believe something is coming? Only then I have a screenshot of the new version at least, better seen it in action.I really want this to happen, but I can hardly believe it. Not after this long time.Now you guys just need to provide Active Directory integration and SQL Server as datastore, and maybe we finally are on the right track.

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2003
    Speed and Branch / Merging are my biggest complaints. VSS needs a better branching and merging system, something like Perforce or ClearCase. It needs to be faster, easier to merge, and handle moves/deletes.Better (or just faster) searching and reports.The annotate command!!Better management of working directories.Changesets (like Perforce, Subversion, Vault) would be nice...Triggers.// Mike// Remove "Hormel" from my email address

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2003
    First, a little background. I am a former PVCS user that loved the power of PVCS, but bailed to VSS when PVCS failed to evolve to support the richer integrated GUI IDE model of development. (And still has not evolved sufficiently IMHO) Comming from PVCS, my biggest gripe about VSS is the lack of proper branch support. The whole Share / Pin / Branch model is very innefficient when attempting to support parallel development /bug fixing of multiple versions of a product composed of multiple sub-projects.If you adopt the Share / Pin approach, the new project is not sufficiently isolated from the master version when generating reports. (You continue to see revisions on the master project until a file in the branched project is branched) You then suffer bloat in the database when the file is branched.I you adopt the Share / Branch approach, the amount of file system space required to store the branched project can get obscene in a very short time (and lead to instability of the VSS database itself)We use the former approach to help put off the database bloat problem, but the reporting problem is an large obstacle when trying to manage the branched project.I'll be honest and say that VSS is probably not going to support our needs much longer, but the pain of adopting and migrating our existing product development lines a new source control system has kept me from bailing... But I have seriously considered it...I do have positive comments too though!IMHO, VSS is still the easiest tool on the market for developers to use on a day-in day-out basis and has right mix of features for the typical developer to get their work done. This is what it ultimatly comes down to doesn't it?Keep up the good work. (And make it easier to manage these multi-project / multi-version beasts that are so common now days)Trevor WagenfuehrP.S. If you need a beta tester to give brutal feedback....

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2003
    I notice that there is one major feature missing from your roadmap...source code that doesn't get corrupted. Sigh.

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2003
    Is the version included on PDC Whidbey functional? I get an error about no default database and nothing works!! Did I miss something?

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 09, 2003
    While not the most important thing, I think the "gee it would be nice" feature that sticks in my mind is the ability to keep a website updated with checkin/diff information, ala CVSWeb or Perforce's P4Web... with bright orange "RSS" buttons, of course.

  • Anonymous
    November 16, 2003
    According to the comments you give, Korby, I would assume that VSS will still be a file based solution with all it's problems (no server side timestamp, no chance to put a central .NET object which watches VSS events etc.). Is that correct?

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2003
    What the product really needs, IMHO, is to be part of an overall Development Framework. The pit of success should factor in here well. In VS there should be a New Project Wizard foa a type of project called somthing like Microsoft Best Practice Project Development, which makes it difficult not to use current best practices with regard to Bug tracking, versioning, builds, Unit testing, testing, project scheduling. I remain hopeful that MS will shoehorn some of their internal products into creating a robust development framework, which includes things like profiling, code coverage, project management, bug and feature tracking, change management, spec management.

  • Anonymous
    November 18, 2003
    I hope that the new VSS will solve my greatest problem with the product: fixed-size dialog boxes aimed at 640x480 screens!Please allow the dialog boxes to be resizable, and to remember their sizes! You can even leave the default at 640x480 if only you'll allow the dialogs to resize!It would be nice to be able to use the Share dialog with projects/files with names longer than two characters...

  • Anonymous
    December 14, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 18, 2003
    Nice to know that SourceSafe is being updated, but what about better integration with Visual Foxpro, as this has always a been a problem.

  • Anonymous
    January 28, 2004
    THe big thing source safe needs is improved branch and merge management. In the real world we need to do releases and patches on releases while developing the next release(s).

    Also change source safe to use a real transactional database rather than the file system with managled names for files.

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2004
    Just dreaming but...
    Any possibility of having some form of configuration management in VSS?
    (i.e. defining tasks that can contain versions of one or more files, and until the task is "released" it does not show up in the build)

    That feature revolutionized my development productivity, and now even mid size shops cannot afford SCM-enabled repositories.

  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2004

    I am just trying Source Safe on a computer graphics project. That means files that are by
    far larger than in a software development project, and a lot of them. What impact do I have to fear while the project grows? Does anyone has experience with large databases in Source Safe? I would appreciate your comment very much. Thank you,
    Andreas.

  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2004
    The maximum recommended database size is 3-4GB. That being said, my team, which authors documentation in Word, has maintained and relied upon VSS databases as large as 18Gb for several years now.

    Use Exclusive Checkouts---Graphics files are binary. Neither SourceSafe nor any other source control provider that I know about can merge differences between two different versions of a binary file. Thus, you need to stick with the default (at least in VSS 6.0) exclusive checkout mode. In other words, you shouldn't enable two designers to check out the same file simultaneously. If you were developing text files, such as C# class files, you could do so.

    Don't use Keyword Expansion in graphics files---The VSS keyword expansion feature was designed for text files. The introduction of VSS keywords into a binary file can corrupt it. For more info about VSS keywords, see http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/posts/54209.aspx.

    Analyze Weekly---You should Analyze your database once a week to resolve any data corruption issues. If you don't run Analyze on a large database regularly, doing so after a long lapse can take FOREVER. For more information about Analyze, see http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/posts/54063.aspx.

  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2004
    Whidbey VSS Secrets?

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2004
    Will it be purchasable as a seperate product? We use 2003 Professional VS.net and would like to upgrade to teh new VSS version when available.

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2004
    You mention access through firewalls with HTTPS.

    Will the certificate authority be configurable?

    I know my development team had some interesting stuff come up with another MS application when we were trying to use SSL, which it supported, but only through predefined certificate authorities which did not include the one that issued our certificates (it's an internal security thing). In any case, it will be good if this option is configurable and not hardcoded into the new vss app.

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 07, 2004
    Source Safe is great as it is. I'm afraid that changing it will make it unstable !

    VSS performance is surprisingly bad when working with large source code bases.

    Source Offsite is a great COMplement ;-)

  • Anonymous
    May 24, 2004
    The one thing I'm confused about is how the new SourceSafe update fits in with the Visual Studio 2005 Team System. Are they seperate products, or is SourceSafe a module within the larger Team System?

    Will the new source safe still require integration with Windows File Sharing? You did mention external developer support (yay) but didn't explicitly say that you won't need to do strange things like VPN login to domains and whatnot. I'd very much like to detach my source safe server completely from the file server! Will the HTTPS support require an IIS server?

  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2004
    The next version of Visual SourceSafe (which I just call VSS "Whidbey") is a completely different product from the source control application that is integrated into Visual Studio 2005 Team System (codenamed "Hatteras"). Different codebases, different architectures, different developers sitting in different states, etc.

    VSS remains a great and ever-improving source control solution for teams of 5 or less.
    Source Control Services for Visual Studio Team Foundation is an enterprise-class source control provider. A customer described it to me this way, "So VSS is to Hatteras as Access is to SQL Server". It's not a perfect comparison but it's apt. For more information about Hatteras, see http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/archive/2004/05/24/140550.aspx

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