Moving from Source Safe to CVS?

Snowfox asks: "At Midway Games, we're currently using Microsoft's SourceSafe. I'm evaluating other options, such as CVS. Currently, SourceSafe is used not only for source code, but art assets, project management documents and more. Has anyone made a move from SourceSafe to CVS? Can you comment on your experiences?"

"Many projects have been suffering problems with SourceSafe. I believe this owes to its leaving management of the source database to the client program instead of the server. A client machine locking up or losing net access in the middle of a check-in can do serious damage. Further, the results of slightly different versions and third-party access utilities with imperfect implementations should be pretty obvious.

For programmers, the two IDEs we use are Visual Studio and CodeWarrior. Both the Linux and Windows versions of CodeWarrior have CVS built in. I can find a few Visual Studio CVS plugins, but no rave reviews of any of them.

For artists and managers, I'm not sure where to look. They definitely need a Windows GUI tool; again, I've found a few options, but none seem quite so easy as SourceSafe. I also worry about whether CVS the right tool for large binaries. As a game company, we deal with 3DS Max files, bitmaps, Word documents and a fair number of compiled executables. Will CVS effectively store these based on differences, or will the database bloat?"

Comments

Re:Using CVS w/ SCC Complient IDEs

[Twylite]

I have used Jalindi Igloo successfully, and its an excellent piece of work. It makes access to the repository transparent, as does VSS integration into VS.

While I like CVS, and attempted at one point to get my company to move to it, I have to admit that there are a lot of features in VSS that make it more powerful than CVS. This includes "little things" like versioning of directories (so when you check out a label you get exactly the right files (and file versions) and directories. File sharing is also incredibly useful (we have several projects that have to share header and/or source files, in a case where libraries aren't an option).

Before you rush to move off VSS, consider your situation carefully. If you have a large history of development in your repository (as we did), then you are going to lose all of that in moving to CVS!! There is no tool which can take all your revision history with you.

CVS has been network access (for non-local networks) than VSS, but poorer tools; and in the case of VC the integration is not as good. VSS is a more stable product than many people give it credit for; but yes, databases do become corrupt (I've seen this with CVS too, when the server went down unexpectedly). Backup is always your best line of defense against corruption.