A developer can use Microsoft Visual SourceSafe with any type of file produced by any development language, authoring tool, or application. Using it enables users to work at file and project levels while also promoting file reuse. Its project-oriented features increase the efficiency of managing day-to-day tasks associated with team-based software and Web content development.

Visual SourceSafe is the name of revision control software produced by Microsoft. It lets users store multiple versions of files and is particularly geared towards managing versions of source code by software developers.

It is part of Microsoft Visual Studio and is available only on Windows platforms. A VSS 5.0 client for Metrowerks CodeWarrior on the Macintosh existed at one time and allowed the use of VSS in Macintosh development projects, but was never updated to allow interoperability with VSS 6.0.

Opinions on Visual SourceSafe vary. Some programmers feel that it is sluggish, causes system instability and is missing features taken for granted on newer revision control systems. The perceived sluggishness of Visual Studio depends greatly on the environment in which it is set up. In single user and small team LAN configurations, it can be reasonably fast. The instability criticism is rooted in the fact that Visual SourceSafe uses a file based archive architecture in which any client can update a file in the archive after "locking it". If a client machine crashes in the middle of updating such file, the file could become corrupted. Many users of Visual SourceSafe get around this limitation by regularly backing up the database and using a utility provided with Visual SourceSafe which checks the database for corruption and can fix certain errors. Many small teams (around 5 people) have used Visual SourceSafe successfuly for a number of years without ever experiencing such a corruption. However, because revision control is such a vital activity for software development teams, the mere possiblity of such an undesirable event (however small it may be) has the effect of discouraging potential users and contributing to their negative opinion of the system. Visual SourceSafe's strong points include its excellent integration with Visual Studio, its easy to use interface and the fact that it is included as part of certain MSDN Subscriptions.

Microsoft is in the process of creating a newer package called Team Foundation Server. This product will address many of Visual SourceSafe's shortcomings which will make it suitable for larger enterprise teams demanding increased stability. Visual SourceSafe will continue to be offered as a retail product and part of certain MSDN Subscriptions.

Although "eating their own dog food" is often said to be part of Microsoft's culture, VSS appears to be an exception. it is widely reported [1], [2], that very few projects within Microsoft rely on VSS, and that the predominant tool is a derivative of Perforce called SourceDepot. Jump to: navigation, search Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) (HKSE: 4338) is the worlds largest software company, with global annual sales in the tens of billions of US dollars and nearly 60,000 employees in more than 90 countries. ...

[Product Overview]

[Features Overview]

[Microsoft SourceSafe 6.0 General Q & A]

[Microsoft SourceSafe 6.0 Technical FAQ]

[Product Documentation]

[Microsoft VisualSourceSafe Road Map] This article gives an overview of Visual SourceSafe, Microsoft's version control technology, and provides a look at where this technology is headed in the future.

Opinions

Alan De Smet crticizes Microsoft SourceSafe 6.0 as Microsoft's Source Destrucion System and opines that "There are many fine solutions for revision control systems. SourceSafe isn't one of them."

Blogs

Ted Graham asked Joel Spolsky "Since you are an ex-microsoftie, I have a question for you: does Microsoft use VSS for their projects? I can't see how they would, it doesn't seem to have the features needed to support multiple versions. I'm a consultant on a fairly large VC++ project on Win2K and we are about to make our first shipment to the end users. I've been looking for a way to do branching like I'm used to in PVCS, but not finding anything. It seems like it has labels available, but we can't branch an individual file off and label the branch. Any ideas?" Joel Spolsky Joel Spolsky (born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. ...

Joel Spolsky in his blog answered Ted Graham "I can't really speak for what Microsoft uses; I haven't been there in years and SourceSafe didn't exist when I was there. I have heard only bad things about it. What I've heard from other programmers is that it's not so strong in the data reliability department. Oops. Do yourself a favor—use CVS like everyone else; it's simple, reliable, ubiquitous, and rock-solid." Joel Spolsky Joel Spolsky (born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. ... The term CVS can stand for: Antisubmarine aircraft carriers (CVS), United States Navys hull classification symbol. ...

Chats

On August 5, 2004 and on December 29, 2004 the Visual SourceSafe product team hosted online chats on MSDN to answer questions about Visual SourceSafe 6.0 and the upcoming Visual SourceSafe 2005. The transcript of this chats is now available.

[Source Control in Visual Studio 2005]

[Internet Access In Visual SourceSafe 2005]