SourceSafe??? Recommendations needed.

[Marcus Streets]

Vorndran, Charles P wrote:
> Loren,
> 
> SourceSafe will certainly handle the file types you mentioned and
> virtually any others that you didn't.  The characteristic of most
> version control systems of this type is that they're really designed to
> store text files efficiently, and binary files, like those that you
> mentioned, are an afterthought.  With text files, only the differences
> are stored after the initial creation, and you can compare any two
> versions and visually see the differences.  With binary files, the
> system must store the complete file for each new version because there
> is no way for them to identify the differences.  This makes storage of
> binary file versions a lot bulkier than storage of text files versions.
> Source safe will compare two binary files and only tell you that they
> are different, no more.  Keep in mind that these source control systems
> were really designed for developers to use to store their ascii source
> code files.
> 
> Microsoft introduced Team System about a year ago.  It's designed to
> handle more concurrent users and has more features.  SourceSafe does
> have limitations in the concurrent user area but we have about 20 or 30
> developers on a Sourcesafe system and don't seem to have a problem, but
> then they're not all accessing the system at the same time.  I suspect
> that with Team System, Microsoft might retire Source Safe in the future,
> but I haven't seen anything in that regard.
> 
> Other systems to look at are:
> 	ClearCase from Rational/IBM is an excellent tool for this and
> handles many users.
> 	Documentum is a document storage system, based on Oracle.  The
> desktop client gives the look and feel of using Windows Explorer, with
> all the drag 'n drop, copy, etc features that Windows users are
> accustomed to.
> 	At the low end of the price range there's CVS and its intended
> replacement, SubVersion.  These, again are designed for text files but
> they will handle binaries, and their low price may make them very
> attractive, if you have the recommended Linux or Unix server(s) to
> support it.
> 

CVS very long in the tooth and unless you have developers who are wedded
to it - do not go there - for binary files it really does nto help you.

SubVersion is a little newer and shinier.

Though personally I like the look of git - another such tool developed
for tracking changes in the Linux kernel source. This is excellent if
you have a large number of developers.

One question - why are you checking FM files into source control.

Could you track XML source for your FM documents.
XML being text is much better suited to tracking by source code systems
- and will take up a lot less disk.

You will still want to have your templates under source code control as
binary files - but hopefully these change less often than the content.

If you check in Frame files you are storing a copy of the template
information every single time you commit. This can chew up your storage
space fairly quickly.

Marcus