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I am in the following predicament, i currently use Subversion for my source control and love it. The problem is that i have to (in the near future) hand over my project to another group of dev's to maintain while still working on it my self . The problem is that they have never heard of or used Subversion and only use MS Source Safe. Even though i have asked them to investigate it they seem to be one minded in that only MS Source Safe should be used.

I need to convince the Team Leaders of the benefits of subversion over Source Safe but since i have not used it in many years i am not sure of what are the exact pitfalls etc of using Source Safe.

The most Important and only features that i know of are.

  1. No File Locking in Subversion
  2. I am able to work offline (from the company network) , since i do this quite often its a important feature for me.

Can you please list any problems that you might have had or any features that you think i might loose by moving to source safe.

Please note Team Foundation server is not a option and that a the project is a .Net Project.

Thanks

RC1140
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  • I guess the answer would depend on the size of the project. If it is a small project and the team size is also small, there is no reason why VSS can't be used. While Subversion has some benefits like those you mentioned, it may be an overkill if the project size is snmall and the users are already familiar with another versioning system. – Rahul May 14 '09 at 05:53
  • 1 & 2 are easily accomplished using VSS. Just check the file out while on the company network, then when you go offline, clear the read-only bit from the files you want to work on. Then when you go back to the office, check the files in. Voila! – Sam Axe May 14 '09 at 05:56
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    @Boo, Voila, you have to be kidding? – Greg Dean May 14 '09 at 06:04
  • Duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/690766/vss-or-svn-for-a-net-project – Jon Skeet May 14 '09 at 06:08
  • @Boo Surely if i understood what i read about VSS , when you checkout you lock a file, this prevents others from working on it. Also the project is pretty big with rapid constant changes being made, which is why to me the Ability to merge is very nice – RC1140 May 14 '09 at 06:10
  • @ Jon Skeet thanks they used too many abbreviations which is why i did not find it initially. – RC1140 May 14 '09 at 06:11

3 Answers3

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The classic arguments against VSS are found in Visual SourceSafe: Microsoft's Source Destruction System

I like subversion for the following reasons

among others...

I've used VSS, ClearCase, CVS and Subversion and I love Subversion

Gary.Ray
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I use VSS at work and Subversion at home and like them both. File locking in VSS can be awesome at times but really suck other times. One of the things I like about Subversion is the ease of branching and whatnot. VSS also seems to have many more issues integrating in to Visual Studio as well.

Gromer
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1

See this, this and this. Long story short: using VSS you spend more time fighting with VSS itself than actually doing useful work.

Anton Gogolev
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