Looking for a good argument

[StuartHemming]

I'm an ex-Vault user of a number of years.

I've recently moved to a company that uses spit VSS.

Over the last couple of weeks we've had a nightmare of files and changes going missing and the like. I have dropped the name of Vault on a number of occasions and after a 14 hour day yesterday, people are starting to listen.

What I'd like is a reasoned argument, from users and/or the boys and girls at SourceGear for Vault over VSS.

Please form an orderly queue.

--
Stuart

[lbauer]

Thanks for being our advocate, Stuart.

Some quick links:

--Reasons to switch from SourceSafe to Vault:

http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=659

--Testimonials from users:

http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=166

We have a new, streamlined SourceSafe Import tool coming in Vault 5.0, plus the "shelve" feature, where you can store work in progress in the database without needing to check it in.

We give quantity discounts on licenses.

Anything else from our other users?

[paulroub]

Where to begin?

Let's start with what won't change -- since no one's looking forward to down time, training, lost functionality or annoyed developers.

• The user interface is very similar - the menus, the command names, the basic layout. Vault will feel comfortable and out-of-your-way on day 1.
• We support VSS's unique features (sharing, pinning), including full import of that data.
• We run everywhere VSS runs, from VB6 to Visual Studio 2008, plus our standalone client.

What's better?

Data Integrity

VSS stores its data in a network-shared directory. Files get corrupted or locked, and data loss follows -- it's one of the chief complaints about VSS. Vault stores its data in SQL Server; data integrity is enforced at the storage level.

At a higher level, there's the idea of "atomic" commits. When you check in 10 files to VSS, 10 separate checkins occur. If the 6th file fails, you're left with 5 checked in, 4 untouched, and 1 which may be in any number of states. Vault checkins (including renames, adds, deletes) occur as a unit. If one fails, the entire transaction is rolled back. No one will "get latest" and end up with only half your work.

Concurrent Development

VSS wants very badly for you to work in exclusive-checkout mode -- one person working on a file at any one time. You can set VSS to allow concurrent development, but it's dangerous -- you don't get to learn of conflicts until you actually try to check your code in.

Vault does support VSS-style exclusive checkouts, but we recommend turning that off. Vault's automatic merge and get-time (as opposed to checkin-time) conflict detection lets you do this safely, instead of waiting for someone else to unlock a file so you can get your work done.

Security

Vault's folder-level security lets you assign read, modify, or no rights at the folder level, not just read vs. read-only for entire repositories.

Performance

One of Vault's main design goals was to perform well over slow connections - VPNs, etc. If you've tried this with VSS, you know how painful that can be.

Features

Vault isn't strictly a "better VSS" -- it's a much more powerful and modern version control system.

• Vault's Pending Changes window shows you all of your unsaved work across all projects. It's much harder to forget to check in that one include file.
• Vault's Line History (video of Line History in Fortress, Vault's big brother) feature lets you zero in on the edit history of one function, or any chunk of code you wish, without looking at in-between checkins that dealt with other parts of that file. It's amazingly useful, and one of my favorite things about Vault
• Vault makes Branching and Merging, for parallel development of mainline and legacy code, cheap, fast and easy.
• Vault's compare/merge tool, DiffMerge, is itself an award-winning, best-of-breed program.
• Vault also integrates fully with Eclipse, with all the same features found in our Visual Studio integration

Beyond

Vault 5.0 is now in beta, with some really cool new features -- see our development blog for updates.

And then there's Fortress -- all of Vault's version control features, tightly integrated with Bug/Issue/Task tracking. A full-blown solution that installs in minutes, and doesn't require a team of administrators or a fleet of servers to run.