Introduction
A general consensus of Microsoft's SourceSafe is that it is very easy to use, but difficult to manage. These two
attributes are not uncommon in applications. When we provide a greater degree of freedom (power) to our users, they often misuse or misunderstand the provided functionality. The ease-of-use permits new users to quickly get up to speed with minimal instruction.
Unfortunately, this ease-of-use often results in incorrect usage of SourceSafe that can result in numerous administrative and/or managerial headaches. These problems would be manageable if SourceSafe provided the proper
administrative tools, but it does not.
SourceSafe Deficiencies
The primary administrative deficiencies are:
- It is a shared group of files rather than an true client/server application.
- An almost total lack of useful reporting for any user above the team member level.
- Which projects are most volatile?
- Which developers are most prolific?
- Are some developers better suited for maintenance vs. new development?
- No tools to indicate potential problems that be indicative of improper or unintended usage.
- Are proper files being shared among projects?
- How many unintentional branches have been created?
- How many pinned files exist and how long have they been pinned?
- Which version of a file is best suited to replace an incorrectly shared file?
- How do I identify and purge projects and files that have been deleted for a given period of time>
- How do I compare the branch history of various files?
SSAnalyzer addresses deficiency #3, and in future releases will address the deficiency #2.