Source Control with Visual Stuido

damnyanks

Howdy,

Gonna work on a group project for my FYP. We want to have some form of source control, given we all have VS 2005 with the bells and whistles I was wondering if anyone could reccomend any sort of source control we could use.

We can't use source safe as we only have *nix servers at our disposal. Does anyone know if its possible to tie the likes of CVS into VS the same way you can with source safe?

stevenmu

Not sure if it fits your needs but look at Subversion for the servers with the AnkhSVN plug-in for VS.

Haven't tried it myself yet, but looked into a little before and it seems pretty decent.

bonkey

I'd agree with stevenmu about Subversion. Haven't used Ankh, can't comment.

Sourcesafe is horrid. I wouldn't recommend its use even if you had windows boxen to put it on.

Personally, I never really saw the benefit of integration with VS. I prefer integration with Windows Explorer, like tortoiseCVS and tortoiseSVN do.

Kernel32

I've worked on some pretty decent sized projects using VSS over the last 10 years and never had many problems. I have found that integration with source control in the IDE has many benefits. The main one being developers are aware of what files they have checked out and don't inadvertently start modifying a non-checked out file.

Source control plug ins have a set of interfaces and an API they need to implement so pretty much any source control system can be integrated with any other piece of software.

Hobbes

Another vote for subversion. Or if its not going to be a big project you can try CVS (old but reliable), but subversion is the next icantation of that. You can also get a CVS plugin for VS afair.

I think the contention of SourceSafe that most people have is the check in/check out system. It can be annoying for example to find that you can fix a bug because your co-worker has left early and not checked back in thier files and you have to go hunting down an admin to unlock the file.

With CVS for example you have the whole source tree on your disk and you can edit what you like. Prior to a check in you have to do an Update which basically merges your code with the servers on your machine. It is then up to you fix contentions before finally checking in. IMHO I find this so much easier to code in vs VSS.

Hobbes

CVS plugin for VS.

http://www.pushok.com/soft_cvs_proxy.php

Kernel32

Hobbes wrote:

I think the contention of SourceSafe that most people have is the check in/check out system. It can be annoying for example to find that you can fix a bug because your co-worker has left early and not checked back in thier files and you have to go hunting down an admin to unlock the file.

Or you could check the little checkbox that says "Allow multiple checkouts" and then it will work as you described for CVS.

Hobbes

Kernel32 wrote:

Or you could check the little checkbox that says "Allow multiple checkouts" and then it will work as you described for CVS.

Not as good (IMHO) and it just turns into a clunky fileserver.

In CVS there is no check out as such. You have all the files.

As for the OP if you have more money then sense you can also go with clearcase.

Mutant_Fruit

After using VSS (on older version) and an SVN server (using SmartSVN as my client on both winxp and macos) i have to say i *much* prefer the SVN route. It was so much easier to handle, even if multiple dev's were working on the same code file, merges were easily handled. All in all, a nice experience.

If you've got *nix boxes, then an svn server should be simple to install. Very simple. The only quibble i have is SmartSVN has a bit of a problem when dealing with huge SVN servers when you want to use the "recent commits" panel. I havn't quite worked out how to use the panel on just a single project, it wants to monitor *all* the projects, but thats it.