What is the best source control product for Visual Studio development?

Question

I work in a Visual Studio/.NET shop which is still using VSS 2005 for source control. We are looking to upgrade to VS Team Foundation Server and use it's source control system, but I'm curious if that's really the best option. The creators of StackOverflow use Subversion but comment that it's a pain to merge code forks back into the main product (discussed in podcast #52). Joel mentioned that Mercurial is used at Fog Creek. Knowing that Joel is something of a software snob and he chose Mercurial over anything from Microsoft, I thought I would pose the quesiton to the StackOverflow audience: which source control product is the best for Visual Studio developers?

Answer 1

It seems that you want to have VS integration but I question the reason for that.

A good source control product has many more features than just VS integration.

You can get subversion to integrate with VS ( Ankh svn and visualsvn ) and I've also used vault which is stable and integrated with VS but I use source control for other things other than just vs work.

So I prefer to work with source control out of the product. You should try it.

Answer 2

The source control is only part of VS Team Foundation Server, which is a complete project management system.

I used both SVN and TFS, and both of them are more stable, robust than VSS.

Answer 3

We use vault, Its good. But use Team System if you can b/c it's from Microsoft. They know how to deal with their own problems/bugs/wayofthinking.

Answer 4

Perhaps you should ask yourself what scm is best for your project.

I like svn cause its free and kind of standard(perhaps a little bit bold to say).

Answer 5

My vote is for TFS. VSS is more than a pain. I have used SVN outside of VS and I would have to see it work along with it.

Working with source control out of the product? Sounds like more work than necessary. Just because it integrates with VS doesn't mean you can't use it for other things. If I am in VS I want to stay in there and not have to go over to another client application to get my source. I like that VS can check out directly.

Answer 6

We switched from VSS to SVN, using only TortoiseSVN for a long time. Recently we began using the VisualSVN plugin for VS (unfortunately not free).

I must say, after getting over the initial pain of not having source control integration in VS, I really liked the level of control I had over all my source control operations. I highly recommend this route.

If you go with Subversion and must have source control integration, I highly recommend VisualSVN.

If you want to give SVN a try, you can install the very free (and very easy to setup) VisaulSVN Server product and have SVN running in just a few minutes on a Windows server.

Answer 7

Coming from VSS any system would be an improvement;-)

Perforce is probably the best mainstream tool I have used. Rational Apex was even better, but unless you're writing Ada that information is of no use to you.

ClearCase is pretty powerful, but I found it pretty hard to use (admittedly I only used it for a couple of weeks, so I possibly didn't give it a fair trial).

For the cost (free) SVN is excellent. The Tortoise shell add-in makes it very easy to use in Windows.

Answer 8

I've had much luck with Ankhsvn. I'm able to use it interchangeably with TortoiseSVN and it does a great job of tightly integrating itself with Visual Studio and the project layout.

http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/

Answer 9

I've worked with VSS, CVS, SVN, and TFS.

VSS: Skip it. I've lost too many changes that literally have just vanished.

CVS: Great solution. Has one feature SVN is missing with a visual of the merging.

SVN: Great solution. You can get add-ins to integrate if you need them. I have only one complaint: merging between branches could be better. But, the product is bomber and very affordable.

TFS: Where I was working, they didn't do much with it. They only used the source control. I was excited to use it, especially the shelving, but I couldn't merge the changes to a branch. I would say it's pretty much what VSS should be. Sometimes MS tries too hard to do things for you that you just have to do for yourself. Also, the UI isn't intuitive.

So, I'd stick with SVN. Though, the new open source standard seems to be GIT (can't comment on it though).

Answer 10

My recommendation is for SourceGear Vault. It's close enough to Visual Source(un)Safe to feel "comfortable" with right away, it's rock-solid (built on SQL Server which solves your backup hassles, too), it's very reliable, has great support for branching and merging - all around good stuff.

It's free for teams up to 2 devs and reasonably priced for larger teams - much less $$$ than Team System (also it's only a Source Control, of course - not a whole team dev system). We use it in conjunction with Fogbugz bug and issue tracker and that combo gives up all the bang we need for much less buck.

Highly recommended.

Marc

Answer 11

SVN is better and faster than VSS. We switched from VSS to SVN 2 years ago because VSS was on servers in New York and the operations on VSS seemed too slow for developers in India. SVN is faster because it was meant for WAN as opposed to VSS which is for LAN. Refer this link

You can use windows explorer to perform SVN operations or you can use AnkhSVN to be able to perform SVN operations from VS.Net IDE.

You can prefer locking files before editing if you find merging them later to be a hazzle. But IMHO merging is really not tht painful, because you get to see the clear distinction between your and your collegues code before you go ahead with the merge.

Advantages of SVN can be found here on stack overflow.

Answer 12

+1 to forget about VS integration.

Many of the best source control tools have great command line interfaces. I've been happily using Git for VS projects for almost a year. The downside is that Git requires a bash shell and it is not very Windows friendly. I'm willing to pay the 'cost' of not having VS integration in order to get all the advanced features that make life really easier.

I would suggest giving Mercurial a try.

I have to add that this advice is more suited for a personal choice of source control. If you are looking for a source control standard for a big company with lots of developers, I would go with a more 'standard' choice like Team System, SVN or Vault.

Answer 13

I use both Vault and TFS at work. We used VSS and others had issues with it, so the lead at the time decided to switch to Vault. I have had no issues with Vault, but others had some with merge and branch.

I started using TFS Trial and like it as much as Vault. I do not use many of the extras, such as the bug and work item tracking just yet, but plan to.

Since you did not mention cost and the comapny is already looking at moving to TFS, I would think that will satisfy your need of getting a product better then VSS and allow you to grow into it in the future.

Answer 14

I prefer TFSVC as it is integrated with all the other services in Team Foundation Server. But it depends on what you want to do. If you want an ALM solution, this is the way to go. I have the ability to set check in policies, integrated builds, and associate with work items. I like the way it does branching and merging. I can have my testers submit bug work items associated with the code in TFSVC. I have traceability to see who is checking in and breaking the builds. I can run reports and get good visibility into the project. Everything works together.

I hope this helps.

John

Answer 15

We use plasticscm at work, it's less known, but very well integrated into VS, you have all the options and graphs inside vs itself.