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

Summary


In this chapter, we looked at the source control operations we use in our daily development activities.

We started by creating a new workspace and got the solution from the SourceSafe database. Then we started development on the solution by creating and visually designing new classes for the Orbital Hotel's room management. After finishing the design, we checked in the changes to the solution so that the other team members can see them and start working on implementing the methods.

Files evolve across time. To view their evolution we use the history functions. To see the changes between versions we use the compare functions. When we need to undo changes and revert to an older file version, we can to so by creating a new version containing old contents or rolling back changes discarding all the changes in between.

Depending on our team requirements and our coding style we can choose between the two check-out models. If we need a more strict development approach, we use the Exclusive...