Changing Source Control

Up to this week I've used Source Safe for my Source control at home. Since Installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1 though, source safe has become a problem. It locks up and is unable to complete file operations more often than not and even after running the db analyze utility, the problem still exists. So after a couple of weeks of this, I decided to switch Source control.

My requirements are pretty straight forward

• It needs to be easy to install and maintain
• It needs to have the ability to migrate from source safe
• It needs to be free for a single user
• It needs to be smart enough to exclude "noise" from the repository
• It cannot add extra "noise" to the project working directory
• It must plug into Visual Studio at no extra cost

To clarify the term "noise", is additional files and folders added by either the source control system, visual studio or third party addin's such as Code Rush, which creates a cache folder for intellisense.

  At the office we use subversion. Personally I find subversion annoying.  First it has no plugin without purchasing a license of Visual Svn or some other third party plugin. It adds a ton of "noise" to the project directory in the form of .svn folders and you have to define exclude lists for the bin and obj folders as well as any other "noise" folders. Additionally it's not smart, if you change a file, say for example add a space, then undo the change, subversion still insists it modified. So based on those issues, subversion was out.

I know there are a number of other free and open source source control alternatives, but in the end I ended up with Source Gear's Vault. Vault uses SQL server as it's repository, so maintenance and backups are greatly simplified. And it installed on SQL 2008 with no issues. Vault has met or exceeded the requirements I listed above and for a single user it's free if you use the provided admin login to access it. Optionally you can purchase a single user license for $249, which is very reasonable given the features and functionality of Vault.

Overall I'm pleased with the switch from Source Safe to Vault, the conversion process to a little less than an hour including installation of the client and server and migration of projects from Source Safe.