Book Image

Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice

Book Image

Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice

Overview of this book

Why is Software Configuration Management important?Software Configuration Management (SCM) is the discipline of managing the building and modification of software through techniques including source-code control, revision control, object-build tracking, and release construction. SCM involves identifying the configuration of the software at given points in time, systematically controlling changes to the configuration, and maintaining the integrity and traceability of the configuration throughout the software development lifecycle.Software Configuration Management is one of the first skills a serious developer should master, after becoming proficient with his or her development tools of choice. Unfortunately, this does not always happen because the subject of SCM is not commonly taught in either academic or company training.When developing software, you need to have a manageable team development effort, track and maintain the history of your projects, sustain parallel development on multiple product versions, fix bugs, and release service packs while further developing the application. This is where the concepts of Software Configuration Management come into play; SCM is about getting the job done safer, faster, and better.Visual SourceSafe has a long history behind it. The previous versions were either loved for their ease of use and integration with other Microsoft products, or hated because the headaches caused by using them improperly. This book will help you to avoid such problems.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Setting up the Workspace


If you remember, we've talked about workspaces back in Chapter 1. While the main solution is contained in a central SourceSafe database on a server machine, users (developers and testers) work individually on their machines.

The purpose of the individual workspace is to provide users with an area where they can work separately from the main solution stored in the SourceSafe database and to separate users in order to prevent their changes from affecting one another while they are working. Users make changes to the workspace content, adding, modifying, and deleting files without the worry that they will affect the main solution in the database or anybody else for that matter, until their changes are ready to be integrated into the main solution in the SourceSafe database.

Workspace Mappings

To maintain a link between the SourceSafe database and the local workspaces, SourceSafe clients use two types of workspace mappings:

  • SourceSafe working folders

  • Visual Studio source...