Snapshot vs branche explained?

[Balvert]

Hi,

I was looking in your documents and site for more information about snapshots. The only information I found that snapshots are simular to branches, but the files are pinned. Great

When should one using snapshots, and when branches?
Why are files pinned?
Is there a performance/storage issue between branche and snapshot?

In this case we are close to a new release of our product (i.e. release 2), but needed to change a feature for the following release 3 (affects only a few sources).
I have created a snapshot and unpinned it so we could already work this feature change for release 3, and it won't affect the trunk / release 2.
After we released the product we will label (and/or branch) version 2, then branch this changes from the snapshot into the trunk and delete the snapshot.

I hope this is the correct approach for snapshot, but I still don't see a big (functional) difference than using a branche. So I hope someone can give me some more information.

TIA,

Rene

[lbauer]

The snapshot function is mostly deprecated in Vault. It was originally used in Vault as a way to implement labels. They are pinned to avoid accidental changes, just as you can't easily change a label. Snapshots are basically branches that don't take up space in the tree until they are unpinned. VSS users switching to Vault wanted the "tag" label implemented as it is in SourceSafe, so we added that functionality very early in Vault. We left in Snapshot because some users do use it.

Going forward, you'll probably be able to do what you need with branches and labels.