Let’s face it.  Visual SourceSafe is pathetic.  The admin tool is horrible, the fact that it uses a text file based database (if you can call it that) system to track projects is antiquated, and anyone who’s ever had to administer a VSS installation knows that if you even look at the database wrong, it will immediately become corrupted, plus you can’t access it over the internet (there are probably some 3rd party add-ins available, but I doubt they’re free).  The only thing it has going for it at this point is how nicely it integrates into Visual Studio.  Beyond that it’s virtually useless.

One item that’s been on my //todo list for a while now is to ditch VSS and move over to SourceGear Vault on my home network as that’s where I do the majority of my coding from lately.  You do use source control at home, right?  Right?  If not, now would be a good idea to start for obvious reasons (would you work on a team that didn’t use source control?), most notably keeping up with changes (duh) as well as having a centralized repository for all of your code.  Why switch to Vault? 

First off, a single license is free.  Just download the server piece and you’re off and running (well, I guess the client piece would come in handy as well).  Secondly, it’s SQL Server based, so you get all the goodness that comes with RDBMS such as security, backup/restore, transactional processing, etc.  Thirdly (is that a word?), the server side part sits in IIS so wherever there’s an internet connection, you can access your code.  Fourthly (definitely not a word), it also integrates into Visual Studio quite nicely.  Fifthly (now I’m just making words up), it just feels/looks/behaves so much more refined than VSS.  And finally, SourceGear provides a VSS -> Vault conversion tool which worked perfectly for me (though it did take quite some time for the 50+ projects I had in VSS).  I am now VSS free…hopefully forever.

The learning curve (if you can even call it that) is minimal…they designed it to look and behave identically to VSS.  Hats off to the developers over at SourceGear for providing this great tool to let us out of VSS hell.  The free single user license is icing on the cake.

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