Source control - SourceSafe vs. SourceGear Vault - the CEO speaks!
For my new book, I've been researching source control packages. I've been talking to Eric Sink, CEO of SourceGear about their product SourceGear Vault.
His blog has a marketing-esque piece on SourceGear, which you can find here. I've reproduced some of the points that I think are most relevent to doing development today - especially in a world where most developers have broadband at home and there really be no impediments to developers working at home on occassion. (Flexible working and all that!)
It's worth knowing that Vault is written in C# and it uses SQL Server as its repository.
Here's quotes from Eric:
"SourceSafe just does not work well over the Internet. Its design is not based on a client-server approach, so it can be extremely slow when used over network lines with high latency or low bandwidth.
"Vault was designed for the Internet from day one.
"Vault's client-server protocol was designed for the constraints of the Internet."
(I guess this part is based on SourceGear's other product - SourceOffSite.)
This is relevent for teams that already have an investment in SourceSafe:
"Vault is perhaps the only version control system designed specifically to replace SourceSafe. In every way possible, Vault presents a familiar interface with familiar terminology. Every major SourceSafe feature is supported, including things like Share and Pin. Our import tool will move your SourceSafe database into a Vault repository, including all historical information."
Huge, huge, huge:
"When you checkin a set of changes to the Vault server, the operation is performed as a single atomic transaction. If one item fails for any reason, then the entire transaction will fail, and the repository will be left in the condition it was in before the transaction was attempted."
Regarding the API:
"SourceGear provides the Vault Client API, which allows our customers to build custom clients using the same API we use. We cannot yet promise that the API is frozen. We can't brag about the completeness of the documentation yet. But we do provide the source code for our command-line client as sample code. And we try to answer every question about this API on our public mailing list."
Also huge:
"We try to be forthcoming about the areas where our product needs to improve, to ensure that expectations are appropriately set. We would rather lose a sale than obtain a disappointed customer.
"For example, the current release of Vault just doesn't have enough scalability to meet the needs of some customers with very large repositories. When we talk with someone who has hundreds of thousands of files, we tell them we are rapidly improving our product and ask if they could wait for our 2.0 release."
Apologies if this seems a bit marketing-y - I really think it's important to get the word out about new tools. :-)
I'd like to hear from anyone who's has anything to say about Vault. (I'm sure Eric would too!) I can be reached here.