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

The Exclusive Check-Out Model


The Exclusive Check-Out Model lets only one user at a time to modify a specific resource. Let's suppose Mary will be the first developer to begin her work. When she opens the RoomManager.cs file and begins to modify it to implement the GetAllRooms method, by default, Visual Studio will silently try to check it out for editing. If the file isn't already checked out to another user, the operation will succeed and the file can be successfully edited.

Looking at the Output window for Source Control reveals the automatic check-out operation:

In the Solution Explorer window, the Source Control icon changes as we expect to a red check mark, showing the file is checked out to the current user, in this case to Mary:

Now, Mary can implement the method without further issues.

While she does her work, John comes in and wants to implement the UpdateRooms method. He opens the RoomManager.cs file and begins typing to implement the method's body. As in Mary's case, Visual Studio...