Question

Maybe just maybe somebody knows of an plugin that will let VSS do perforce-like changelists? I know its a long shot, but we are stuck with VSS.

Answer 1

You say you’re stuck with VSS — would switching to Team Foundation Server be an option? It’s basically the successor to VSS, and, if you’re under direction to remain a “Microsoft shop”, it may still satisy your requirements. Team Foundation Server supports changelists (changesets — whichever term you prefer). Summary:

Source control Team Foundation Server
provides a source control repository,
called Team Foundation Version Control
(TFVC). Unlike Microsoft’s previous
source control offering, Visual
SourceSafe (VSS), which relied on a
file-based storage mechanism, Team
Foundation source control stores all
code, as well as a record of all
changes and current check-outs in an
SQL Server database. It supports
features such as multiple simultaneous
check-outs, conflict resolution,
shelving and unshelving (shelving is a
way to save a set of pending changes
without committing them to source
control, while still making them
available to other users), branching
and merging, and the ability to set
security levels on any level of a
source tree, alongside the most
visible features of document
versioning, locking, rollback, and
atomic commits. The source control
mechanism integrates with Team
System’s work items as well; when a
check-in (termed “changeset”) occurs,
a developer can choose to have his
code associated with one or more
specific work items, to indicate that
the check-in works towards solving
specific issues. TFS administrators
can enforce check-in policies that
require Code Analysis requirements to
have passed, as well as to enforce the
association of check-ins with work
items, or update the state of
associated work items (like flagging a
bug as “fixed” when checking in code
that has the bug fixed). Individual
versions of files can be assigned
labels, and all files with the same
label forms a release group. Unlike
VSS, TFS source control repository
does not support linking to an item
from multiple places in the source
folder structure, nor does it allow an
item to be “pinned” (allow different
references to the same file from
different directories to point to
different versions in a way that
cannot be further edited).

TFVC supports branching at entire
source code level as well as
individual files and directory levels
as well, with each branch being
maintained individually. Multiple
branches can be merged together, with
the built in conflict resolution
algorithm merging the changes between
two branches of the same file where it
can automatically reconcile the
differences or flagging them for
manual inspection if it cannot. Merge
can be performed at “changeset” level
as well, instead of the branch level.
A successful merge is automatically
checked out in the source control
repository.

TFVC is not limited to source code
only, but using the Windows SharePoint
Services infrastructure it is built
on, it provides a version-controlled
library for other documents in the
project as well, including project
plans, requirements and feature
analysis documents among others. All
documents in the source controlled
repository can be linked with any work
item, and access to them can be
controlled by defining access
policies.