Using Subversion in a dumb organization

[Bala Paranj <bp...@yahoo.com>]

I know what it is like using some version control systems that are total screw-ups for even
simplest tasks.

I am joining a company that is using MS source safe as the source control. I am planning to use
Subversion for my own purposes using svn protocol. This way I would always have the history of my
source files and leverage other sound features of Subversion.

I would like to know the best approach to using Subversion with MS source safe in this kind of a
scenario. Any ideas? TIA.

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Re: Using Subversion in a dumb organization

[Garrett Fitzgerald <sa...@gmail.com>]

On 8/17/06, Kevin Greiner <gr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know VSS doesn't have a great reputation but, IMO, it's certainly better
> than nothing. Personally, I've used it for years and never lost data due to
> a VSS bug. Your experience may differ, of course.

Run ANALYZE.EXE early and often.

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Re: Using Subversion in a dumb organization

[Kenneth Porter <sh...@sewingwitch.com>]

--On Monday, August 21, 2006 12:01 PM -0400 Toby Johnson 
<to...@etjohnson.us> wrote:

> Since any perceived "security" in VSS is simply a smokescreen (since
> using VSS requires full read/write/delete access to its underlying file
> shares), a fun tactic is to demonstrate this fact to the powers that be
> (not by anything malicious of course, just showing them that you could
> browse around the repo backend and basically change/delete data files,
> change access privileges, etc.)

In fact, the vss2svn conversion completely ignores the "security" files and 
goes straight to the backend database. It works fine with a read-only 
share,  or a copy of your VSS repo on CD, as well.

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Re: Using Subversion in a dumb organization

[Toby Johnson <to...@etjohnson.us>]

Kevin Greiner wrote:
>
> On 8/16/06, *Bala Paranj* <bparanj@yahoo.com 
> <ma...@yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>     I am joining a company that is using MS source safe as the source
>     control. I am planning to use
>     Subversion for my own purposes using svn protocol. This way I
>     would always have the history of my
>     source files and leverage other sound features of Subversion.
>
>  
> Good luck. That sounds very difficult. In particular, operations like 
> moving and renaming files and directories sounds very hard to 
> duplicate properly between a remote VSS server and a local svn 
> repository. You'll also have to deal with sync'ing two different 
> working copies or having both svn and vss control files/directories in 
> the same working copy. That doesn't sounds fun either.
>  
> I know VSS doesn't have a great reputation but, IMO, it's certainly 
> better than nothing. Personally, I've used it for years and never lost 
> data due to a VSS bug. Your experience may differ, of course.

Then you're certainly one of the lucky ones! Many people don't even 
realize they've lost data until they try to actually do a full dump of 
their VSS repo with full history, and find that much of their data is 
now unretrievable. Analyze.exe helps but is very limited in what it can do.

Bala, rather than try to get Subversion to coexist with VSS, I'd try to 
convince your new company to switch to Subversion. Start talking about 
its benefits any chance you get.

Since any perceived "security" in VSS is simply a smokescreen (since 
using VSS requires full read/write/delete access to its underlying file 
shares), a fun tactic is to demonstrate this fact to the powers that be 
(not by anything malicious of course, just showing them that you could 
browse around the repo backend and basically change/delete data files, 
change access privileges, etc.)

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Re: Using Subversion in a dumb organization

[Kevin Greiner <gr...@gmail.com>]

On 8/16/06, Bala Paranj <bp...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am joining a company that is using MS source safe as the source control.
> I am planning to use
> Subversion for my own purposes using svn protocol. This way I would always
> have the history of my
> source files and leverage other sound features of Subversion.


Good luck. That sounds very difficult. In particular, operations like moving
and renaming files and directories sounds very hard to duplicate properly
between a remote VSS server and a local svn repository. You'll also have to
deal with sync'ing two different working copies or having both svn and vss
control files/directories in the same working copy. That doesn't sounds fun
either.

I know VSS doesn't have a great reputation but, IMO, it's certainly better
than nothing. Personally, I've used it for years and never lost data due to
a VSS bug. Your experience may differ, of course.