Visual Source Safe –A Quick Tour

CONTENTS What is VSS ? How to install VSS ? How does VSS track versions? VSS Concepts & Features Utilities available in VSS Drawbacks/Problems faced

What is VSS ? VSS is a version control system for team development/testing of software applications. VSS stores and keeps track of changes to a file VSS uses Reverse Delta Technology to store the different versions and changes done at each version. VSS can return to earlier versions of a file VSS runs on Windows 95, Windows NT,Win 2K,Windows XP, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 & Macintosh.

How to install VSS ? Go to Apps on your LAN server ( Example: \\SOFTWARE\Visual_Studio6.0)\\SOFTWARE\Visual_Studio6.0 Select Disk1 and run the SETUP application. Use the CD-key provided. The installation wizard will guide you along while you install the Visual SourceSafe. There are two parts of setting up of VSS viz., Admin and User. For both, Admin and User, you need to install VSS on server as well as local PC.

How does VSS track versions? VSS uses three methods to track versions of files and projects: Version numbers: Internal numbers maintained by VSS. Every version of every file and project in VSS has a version number. The version number is always a whole number and always increases. User does not have any control on Version numbers Labels: These are strings that you can apply to any version of a project or file. A label is a free-form string of up to 31 characters. E.g.:- "2.0", "1.01b", "SentToOnsiteOn23Oct", and "Audited Base Line". Date/Time stamp: These tell when a file was last modified, or when a file was checked in.

VSS Concepts & Features Key terms Project : It is a collection of files that is stored in Visual Source Safe Working Folder :A specified folder on a user's local computer used to store files when they are checked out of the Visual SourceSafe database. A user makes changes to files in the working folder, and then checks the modified files back into the Visual SourceSafe database for version tracking.

VSS Concepts & Features Key terms Shadow Folders : A shadow directory is a centralized directory on your server that contains the latest versions of all the files in a project. It is useful under the following situations - You may have users who need to see the files, but who do not have access to Visual SourceSafe. You may want everyone to compile out of a centralized directory, instead of in their working directories.

VSS Concepts & Features Key terms Add Files : Copies a file, or group of files, into the current Visual SourceSafe project. Check out :Process of getting a writable copy of the file to the set working folder is called Checking out. Undo Check out : If the user does not want to save the changes made he should do an Undo Check out. Check in :Process of returning the file to VSS after making modifications is called Checking in. Get Latest Version : Process of getting a latest read only copy from VSS is called Get Latest Version.

VSS Concepts & Features Key terms Show History : The History of File dialog box displays the history of a selected file, including all significant events, such as the creation date, check in dates, and current version number. Various options are available in this dialog box  Detail  Diff  Pin/Unpin  Roll back  Report

VSS Concepts & Features Key terms Share : To share a file, you create a share link between two projects. The file is then in two (or more) projects at the same time. When you check in the file to any one of the projects, your changes are automatically checked in to all of them Branch :If you create a branch, the share link is broken. Changes made in the branched file no longer propagate to the originating project, and vice versa.

VSS Concepts & Features He is the person responsible for Visual Source Database He controls the location of the database He can add/delete/edit users. He can give access rights to different users. The different access rights are 1. Read 2. Check In/Check Out 3. Add,Delete and Rename 4. Destroy The Administrator

VSS Concepts & Features Can change the user/admin password Customizes the SS.INI & SRCSAFE.INI files Can Undo the checkout on any file by any user Can lock the visual source safe database Can retrieve deleted files from any project Can Rollback a file to its previous version Analyze/backup/cleanup/archive the visual source safe database The Administrator

VSS Concepts & Features Can Add files to a project [If he has the access] Can delete files from a project Can view the files/file history/difference between versions Can Checkout/Checkin files Can set the working folders Can change his/her password The User

VSS Concepts & Features Can get latest version[read only/writable] of a file into his working folder Can customize the use of Command warnings Can create Reports on the status of a file/project Can search for information in files/projects Can label the project/files. The User

VSS Folder Structure

Document Flow Working Folder Review Folder Review Fail Baseline Pass Add a new document to VSS Move to Review Folder for Internal review

VSS Utilities ANALYZE.EXE - Scans database for data integrity & errors. SSARC.EXE - Archives earlier versions of project from the database. SSRESTOR.EXE - Restoring files/projects from an Archive file DDCONV.EXE - Updates VSS from an older format to new format

Drawbacks/Problems faced in VSS Admin doesn’t have access on this project !! I can’t see any files in this subproject !! When I try to login as admin it gives Invalid syntax in line 11 of SSADMIN.INI file !! I can’t see the previous versions of this file !! I can’t see the differences between 2 binary files When I filter for a single subproject vss applies the filter to entire project.

THANK YOU !!