Visual Sourcesafe server for practice

Question

Hi,

I there a Visual SourceSafe server running somewhere that I can connect to for practice? I have a couple of things that I would like to test before buying the VSS server but I don't want to download the whole app for testing.

Best regards

Answer 1

short answer: save your time and don't buy. Use SVN, git or if you are all for an ms solution then use Team Foundation Server.

Answer 2

Try Accurev (www.accurev.com) or Perforce (www.perforce.com) or PlasticSCM (www.plasticscm.com)

Answer 3

There are lots of people who love to hate on VSS, and honestly I can't blame them (much). VSS has a reputation for being unstable, corruptable, and idiosyncratic. This reputation, in some cases, is well deserved, in others it's a case of improper management, improper administration, or improper too choice for the job.

VSS is not the tool for everyone, but it is an adequate tool for a large number of people, and it's got very good integration with Visual Studio.

VSS these days is pretty stable, but you don't want to use it over an unstable network (unless you're using the HTTP based server approach) because it can corrupt files. It should only use the file-based version control inside a reliable on-site network. If you're going to do any off-site ore distributed development, then you need to use the HTTP model, or choose a different product.

VSS has some quirks. Branching doesn't work the way most people want it to. This is not necessarily VSS's fault, as it was designed to operate a little different from other Version Control of the time (remember, it's 20 year old product). People that choose it, expecting it to work differently than it's designed to have chosen the wrong tool for the job.

I've successfully used VSS in monster sized repositories. One of the keys is that you need to run the analysis and fix tools on it regularly to head off potential problems before they become corrupting problems.

You also don't want to use VSS in any situation where you need security, because VSS's security is application based. Being that you need direct file read/write access, anyone can go into the files and fiddle with them by hand if they want. Again, this is different if you're using the HTTP server component. (For what it's worth, this is similar to many kinds of version control of that era, such as RCS and SCCS, so it's not like this was unheard of)

Now, having said all this, to answer your question, if you've got download access to VSS (such as through MSDN), just download it.. it's not that big. It's only 100MB.

Answer 4

If you have to implement a source control system. Start with SVN or Git, hands down. Take a look at VisualSvn server with AnkhSvn and TortoiseSvn for client tools. They are all FREE.