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 explored working from remote locations using SourceSafe.

To work online and connect to the SourceSafe database remotely we can use the SourceSafe internet plug-in with Visual Studio. If we do not have an internet connection to the SourceSafe server, then we can work offline in the disconnected mode. Visual Studio simulates checkouts so we can edit the files we need.

Later, we can reconnect to the SourceSafe database and synchronize our changes with the database. Depending on the SourceSafe plug-in we have used to reconnect to the database, we can encounter different scenarios.

When using the LAN plug-in, the Only allow checkouts of the latest version option determines if there is a potential for data loss or not. When this option is enabled for backward compatibility, we have to be careful and take the necessary steps we've seen in the Handling Data Loss Situations section. This is necessary to avoid overwriting the changes made by other users in the revisions created...