Microsoft Visual SourceSafe

Other FIRST-related Organizations
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I think I should reiterate for the twelve millionth time that I have absolutely know software development experience whatsoever. It’s like interpretting hieroglyphics to me, except I’d stand a better shot with the hieroglyphs.

For that reason, I feel awful about brow-beating people into getting work done, and I’m worried that the folks I need don’t have the time necessary to complete work on the freelanceFIRST backend. As someone who can’t step in and do it myself, I’m not willing to nag people about this work – especially when the only compensation may be a thank you.

In speaking with a close friend who’s recently taken an internship with Microsoft, she started telling me about how she had to check in and check out the files she was working with. I asked her more about that, and it turns out, of course, that Microsoft uses its own product to maintain revision tracking and file ownership things. Of course, this is quite like a large part of what freelanceFIRST was trying to integrate into its infrastructure. The software is Microsoft Visual Sourcesafe.

Would you developer sorts who are aware of what freelanceFIRST is trying to accomplish take a few moments to look over this software and its features and see if it can be adapted to what we’re trying to accomplish? While I understand that most folks have an intense distaste for Microsoft’s products, their sponsorship of FIRST and my friend’s access to their company store make this particular software package attractive to me as a non-developer.

Of course, I’m not really sure if it can do what we want it to do.

Any suggestions or comments? Remember, the budget here is $0 for the time being. :slight_smile: Thanks.

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*Originally posted by M. Krass *
**Of course, I’m not really sure if it can do what we want it to do.

Any suggestions or comments? Remember, the budget here is $0 for the time being. :slight_smile: Thanks. **

We use something similar at work for version control: CVS (Concurrent Versions System)

It’s free, so it should fit into your budget nicely. Not sure if it would be any better/worse than SourceSafe, but its always good to have options.

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*Originally posted by Brandon Martus *
**We use something similar at work for version control: CVS (Concurrent Versions System)

It’s free, so it should fit into your budget nicely. Not sure if it would be any better/worse than SourceSafe, but its always good to have options. **

That made my head spin the last time you showed it to me. :slight_smile: Thank you for mentioning it again, though, so that the more-suited-than-me folks can take a look at it.

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Visual SourceSafe is nice, assuming everybody is using Visual Studio and all Windows machines. However, it’s not free or Free. CVS is probably the best bet, and there are some nice front-ends for it, such as WinCVS, etc.

What work exactly still needs to be done on the backend?

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*Originally posted by rbayer *
**Visual SourceSafe is nice, assuming everybody is using Visual Studio and all Windows machines. However, it’s not free or Free. CVS is probably the best bet, and there are some nice front-ends for it, such as WinCVS, etc.
**

Well, I was thinking more about using it as the website rather than for overseeing the development of the website. That is, skip the development altogether and use some internet-based implementation of that software as the backend. Was that clear? I’m sorry if it wasn’t.

**

What work exactly still needs to be done on the backend? **

To answer that, I have to defer to Nate because I’m not sure how far he managed to get with what he was working on.

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Our first real production experience with Source Control came a year ago when we started to cooperate in software development with two other outsourcing companies – one of them is located in Europe. Since Visual SourceSafe and similar tools at the time could be used only in the intranet environment, we started with task assignment and sharing files through e-mails, trying to organize distributed development and keep synchronization of files. That was a nightmare! We had a serious problem with this organization. Soon, we had to find a better and more efficient solution. Luckily, we got a trial version of Source Control, a product of Ilumnis ltd, from their web site www.ilumnis.com
Shortly after, we were very satisfied with its features and it was exactly what we needed, so we decided to buy Source Control and we started to use it for software development. Here are the main benefits of this tool:

· Speed. It's fast. The code behind this tool was recently rewritten for the latest version and it is as fast as lightning. You don’t need super fast internet to use it. It has high compression for file transferring and it uses post backs only when it’s needed, not on every click, as some web applications do. 
· Ease of use. Very intuitive graphical user interface keeps your impression that you work with windows application, not with web application and simple web controls. I wish other tools that we use are as half intuitive as this product is. 
· No installation or support for configuration needed. It is just not there and it is one of the very important features to us. We do not want our developers to waist hours in configuration and installation of new features, updates, versions problems and the like. 
· Application uses SQL Server 2000 database, but you don’t need to have SQL Server on your machines, we use Source Control and its database which is hosted by Ilumnis in ASP mode. Everything you need is a browser and you are ready to use it. 
· Proactive. Believe or not, if you have a subscription, a tool will notify you about changes via email. So, there is no guessing what a developer needs to download for his current build. It is possible to subscribe for files and folders in the project. It is even possible to collect email notifications in daily or weekly batches so the system is not annoying at all. Proactive, but not annoying. 
· Publishing. You can use this as a publishing system, instead of some expensive specialized software. The system is able to copy files to the appropriate URL via ftp.
· Remote Build. The software is able to automate and run nightly builds. This is easiest to set up with .Net but, as long as you can write a build script, it can do it for almost anything. Just configure the application for automatic build and get e-mail notification with build results. 
· Issue tracking. One has to be impressed with the tool that encompasses so much of needed functionality and almost nothing you won’t use. The system is able to track project issues and it is tied into Source control itself. So when you are checking out the file you also respond on the appropriate issue. Great!

With this system you can have as many developers as you want and never worry about versions they work on. Project leaders and managers now can work on the same project despite of their distance or time zone. Yes, I have to mention this simple, but very useful feature, time zones are covered so you can see exactly when the file was modified, added or deleted in your or developers local time. It’s very important to emphasize that Source Control keeps history of all changes and it is easy to compare two version of the same file.
Give it a try, you will not regret it. www.ilumnis.com

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Well… I’m not one that has a ton of time, actually rather the opposite. Very busy.

However, I’ve been using PHP and doing web developement for two years now and actually have been employeed reacently doing just that.

I’ve tried to look over the sourcesafe and the ilumnis thing, and I guess I’m still rather confused at exactly what you guys want your software to do.

I’m guessing that the goal is something similar to CVS, just with a web based interface, and because the files could very well be binary, have check-in, check-outs.

IE: The process would go something like this:

Team A submits a request. Maybe they need help changeing some of their robot’s code or a 3ds max animation.

Person B wants to help so they “check out” person A’s file. They also can post comments back and forth between Team A. They can choose for these comments to be public or private. (Public: all can see, Private: only Team A, Person B, and moderators can see. This would be useful for “seneative” information such a robot specs, etc… before the ship date)

Let’s say that it’s taking person B a long time to post an update (afterall, everyone gets swamped with work). But person C comes along with tons of time and wants to help. He can download the file orgionally uploaded by Team A (of course, there’s a warning that the file’s already checked out, etc…)

When both person B and C finish and upload their files, Team A can choose the best one and select that to become the “new” active file. Emails of course can be sent out whenever files / comments are updated, etc…

Is this somewhere’s near what you guys were looking for?

Like i said, I’m rather busy, but I think that over a couple weeks, I could get something out. The skill I lack the most is graphic design, but since M. Krass seems to be pretty good in that neck of the woods, things might be alright.

Let me know what ya guys think.

Jack

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What you described is an excellent approximation of what I am hoping for the backbone of this project to be. There are other features that I’d like included as well, but everything is based around a content-management system that’ll effectively allow people to work together over great distances.

Not much has happened with this in many months, but it’s something I’m still very much interested in completing and am appreciative of anyone who wants to help get it done.

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