Purge Support

When you use the default Delete command on the File menu to delete files or projects from a Visual SourceSafe database, the deleted items appear to be removed. However, the database continues to store them so that you can recover them and, for example, rebuild earlier versions of a project that requires these items. Sometimes, for example, to free disk space, you will want to purge these items from the database. Visual SourceSafe supports purging through an option on the Delete command. For more information, see How to: Delete a File or Project.

Basic Purging

The Delete command opens the Delete dialog box, which you can use to purge an item by selecting the Delete Permanently check box. For a purging procedure, see How to: Purge Deleted Files and Projects.

Caution   When you purge a file or a project, you cannot recover it. Before purging be sure that you will never want the file or project, or any one of its earlier versions, for any reason.

Purging Shared Files

The only way to permanently delete a shared file is to purge it in all projects that are using it. Unless you do this, individual purge operations for the shared file do not necessarily free disk space. For example, a team member purges an obsolete header file, Widget.h, from a shared project. Then another team member checks the local version of the same header file into the shared project. The first purge operation has not freed disk space at all, and has effectively been canceled.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Delete a File or Project
How to: Purge Deleted Files and Projects