Alternative to SourceSafe in a Commercial Environment?

Jim the Bad asks: "After Visual SourceSafe inexplicably corrupted itself one time too many, my Boss has asked me to evaluate the alternatives. This site lists some alternatives, and SourceForge is a commercial product that might suit. Are there any more? It must be rock solid, run on Windows and it must be possible to migrate existing SourceSafe databases. Developer Studio integration is also very desirable. What product would you recommend?"

Comments

A coupla things

[The Bungi]

First, VSS is a crap version control system (if only because it's not client/server), but it doesn't corrupt itself randomly. You need to keep your database sizes to under 1GB or so, run ANALYZE on the thing at least every week (or more, depending on the activity) and generally keep binaries (especially large ones) off of it. Just because the thing has a pretty GUI doesn't mean it also takes care of itself. And of course, backup your database(s) often.

Your Visual Studio integration requirement is a doozy. I haven't seen anything that works as well as VSS, but then again, another recommendation is to stay away from that anyway. Always use the Explorer or the command line tools.

Finally, the alternatives. Well, there's the Very Expensive ones which I won't list because you probably know them anyway and, well, they're hideoulsy expensive.

Then there's CVS. An el-cheapo box running Linux or BSD with decent HDD space, and WinCVS or TortoiseCVS can't be beat. I've successfully migrated some development teams to this setup (along with Bugzilla) and while there's a learning curve, it's certainly much better. Plus, developers can work from home seamlessly, which is generally not the case with VSS. There are lots of tools and help out there for CVS. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed. Plus, it's cheap!

Re:A coupla things

[Circuit Breaker]

I haven't seen anything that works as well as VSS

Try Jalindi Igloo (search google for it). It integrates with VS6 as well as, if not better, than VSS. And Tortoise is simply the best UI for version control I have ever used.

Went from VSS - CVS

[HalfFlat]

We used Visual Source Safe at the beginning of our project (about 10 programmers), despite calls for using CVS instead. VSS did not last three weeks. It is the embarassment of the revision control world. It is Just Broken.

Note that Microsoft most certainly do not eat their own dog food. At least, they certainly did not then (1998-1999).

We threw out VSS. Moved to CVS, despite losing Visual Studio integration and past revision history. In fact, we just used CVS from a command window. It worked, and worked well.

There are commercial and free products now which probably fit your requirements. But if you can't find one, you still ought to ditch VSS and go with something that actually works. It doesn't matter how convenient your source control system is if it doesn't actually control it, or like VSS, actively corrupts it.

Gforge

[R0]

Gforge is an opensource fork of Sourceforge (What irony?). You can buy support for it too.

Make up your mind...

[merriam]

It must be rock solid, run on Windows...

Well make up your mind and pick one.

I know, I know. But someone was bound to say it.

RE: Alternatives to Visual Source Safe

[iid_iunknown]

I have always preferred Rational ClearCase over VSS and have also used a new product from SourceGear called SourceGear Vault which claims to be a compelling replacement for VSS. Well, guess what? They're right. Not only is it a better SCC, but it also has tight integration with both VS *AND* the classic remote access products from SourgeGear (ie. SourceOffSite) for your offsite development staff. Both are recommended, but the Rational tools are a bit pricey for smaller shops. I believe that a 5-node version of SourceGear Vault is priced around $599 (if you already owen SQL Server), or $999 (which includes a SQL Server license). Take a look at SourceGear Vault