What's the right way to branch with Visual Source Safe?

Question

What I currently do is I link the project to another location and give it the same name, then check the box where it says "Branch after share." And then I would Check out the shared project and work off it. And finally merge with the original project.

This works okay, but it feels very clunky: I have multiple instances of the project on my drive; I have to change physical address of the website (i use asp.net 1.1) every time I work on a different branch;

That doesn't feel like the right way to do it. How do you branch your projects with VSS?

Answer 1

I think the way you describe in the question is the only way you can do it in sourceSafe.

I usually name the copied directory "V1.0" (or whatever is appropriate) and keep them all in a folder that is the main project name.

Answer 2

The way you described is the only supported way to do "branching". And as you pointed out it is rather clunky. In VSS it's best to avoid branching alltogether as it will destroy your source history.

Answer 3

I'm just going to come out and say it. Don't use VSS. But if you have to, then don't branch. Or merge. It's not worth the virtual certainty of corruption.

Answer 4

That is the generally accepted way of branching your source code in SourceSafe. The only other way to do it, if merging and retaining the history are not an issue, is to copy the files to a new folder, remove the read-only attribute, remove the .vssscc and .scc files, and then add that new project to SourceSafe. At that point, you have an all new project, with no prior history.