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A few good men: the next SourceSafe servicing release, recruiting, and you

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Many of you have wondered aloud when VSS 2005 SP1 will finally arrive.  I can't answer that yet, because the answer may be "never."  Fortunately, that's just semantics, as we'll see in a moment.  I do have some information for you today -- all of it good -- as well as a way you can help.

Why "the next SourceSafe servicing release"?  What kind of name is that?  It isn't one.  The truth is we don't know yet whether this set of fixes will be released as SP1, a GDR, or a hotfix rollup.  In the past, on the forums you may have seen me refer to fixes being "included in SP1" or "VSS GDR".  No more.  I don't want to release a lowly hotfix rollup that has everything I promised for "SP1" & more, only for people to say thanks, but when is the real SP1 coming? due to name confusion.  Same thing with the so-called "preview release" (aka CTP, SP1 beta, GDR beta, etc.)  So annoying vague names it is.  On to the news.

We will ship a SourceSafe servicing release later this year.   No, I don't anticipate it'll take us until 12/31/07 to deliver the fixes you guys need...just hedging my bets in this very public forum.  In fact, to some degree, we need community participation early & often.  This will happen via two avenues: 

(1) We will ship at least one preview release before the final servicing release.  I don't know yet whether this will be publicly available @ downloads.microsoft.com or if we'll go through MS Connect.  If you have strong feelings one way or another, let us know.

(2) We will convene a small group of volunteers to test builds more frequently.  If you're willing to try prerelease builds, please leave a blog comment or use the 'contact' button.   I can start collecting contact info immediately, with the aim to deliver the first builds within the month.  I think these builds are already higher quality than 2005 RTM, with nowhere to go but up...IMHO of course.  Nevertheless it's important to caution that they have not been tested very extensively.  We're recruiting some internal customers as part of this program, but the fact is there isn't much VSS dogfooding within Microsoft.  Furthermore, these builds will probably not include prefabbed installers / uninstallers and certainly won't have dedicated webpages, READMEs, etc. that official CTPs and Betas do.  Of course, we will help you install them and troubleshoot any problems you encounter.  Because it will be relatively hands-on, I must limit this program to 5-10 people max, sorry.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 02, 2007
    I'd love to help you dogfood the upcoming VSS servicing release.  We have both production and lab environments we could use it in. steve dot hoek @ 2020 dot net

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2007
    I'd like to participate in testing too. I use VSS2005 daily and often see some of the crash bugs (like #117957 that I filed on MS Connect) and perf issues in VSSEXP.

  • Anonymous
    May 07, 2007
    I'd like to participate in testing. I use VSS2005 every day and see problems with the analyze tool which I'd like to know if they are fixed in the SP1.

  • Anonymous
    May 08, 2007
    Thanks to everyone who's responded so far.  I'll be in touch as soon as the legal issues are sorted out. We only have a couple more spots, so reply now if you haven't yet.

  • Anonymous
    May 08, 2007
    I'd like to participate in testing, I'm a VSS admin at a medium sized South Jersey bank and I'd love to see the fixes to analyze.

  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2007
    Yes, I'm willing to try it. "Check Out the local version" is a must-have option for our projects. I've got a quote for another 12 copies of VSS2005, but couldn't place an order because of this.

  • Anonymous
    May 22, 2007
    Kun: please make sure you leave your contact info, otherwise I cannot send you anything :)   You can use the "Email" link above if you don't want to post it publicly.

  • Anonymous
    May 30, 2007
    I was unable to post in the forums so I'll put here hoping it gets seen :) The old VSS would hide files that have already been added when you go to the Add Files dialog. As simple as it is, it is EXTREMELY useful when trying to find what's missing. Unless I've overlooked a setting in options, please consider returning this functionality.

  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2007
    As answered on the forums, you can hold Shift while bringing up the Add dialog (or any other dialog) to get the VSS 6.0 functionality back. Note: the hotfix testing program is now full.  Thanks to everyone who replied -- we will be in touch shortly.

  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2007
    I'd like to participate in testing, I'm a VSS admin at a medium size Automobile company and I'd love to see the fixes to analyze.

  • Anonymous
    June 06, 2007
    We finally have a name. Last time I blogged about the future of SourceSafe , I had to constantly refer