Here’s a tip for those poor suckers (like me) who are still stuck using Visual SourceSafe. With SourceSafe 2005 Microsoft tried to clean up some of the ugly UI aspects that carried over from previous versions. In particular, a couple of the old, non-resizeable dialogs were totally replaced with shiny new models.
Unfortunately, at least two of the new dialogs – the “Add Files” dialog and the “Set Working Folder” – have actually lost useful features in their new incarnation. Specifically:
- The original “Add Files” dialog included the ability to only show files that weren’t already checked in. This feature is actually quite useful when adding files to an existing project.
- The original “Set Working Folder” dialog included the ability to clear the working folder specified for a particular project. This is useful when you have a sub-project set to a specific working folder, and you want it instead to inherit its root working directory from a parent project.
Fortunately, the SourceSafe team left the original dialogs accessible, they’re just hidden away. To get at them, simply hold down the shift key while selecting the corresponding menu item.