Sams Teach Yourself .Net in 21 Days

By Jason Beres

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You
  • Introduction
  • Week 1: At a Glance
  • Day 1. Introduction to the Microsoft .NET Framework
  • Day 2. Introduction to Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 3. Writing Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 4. Deploying Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 5. Writing ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 6. Deploying ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 7. Exceptions, Debugging, and Tracing
  • Week 1. In Review
  • Week 2: At a Glance
  • Day 8. Core Language Concepts in Visual Basic .NET and C#
  • Day 9. Using Namespaces in .NET
  • Day 10. Accessing Data with ADO.NET
  • Day 11. Understanding Visual Database Tools
  • Day 12. Accessing XML in .NET
  • Day 13. XML Web Services in .NET
  • Day 14. Components and .NET
  • Week 2. In Review
  • Week 3: At a Glance
  • Day 15. Writing International Applications
  • Day 16. Using Macros in Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 17. Automating Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 18. Using Crystal Reports
  • Day 19. Understanding Microsoft Application Center Test
  • Day 20. Using Visual SourceSafe
    • Introducing Visual SourceSafe
    • Installing VSS
    • Using the Visual SourceSafe Administrator
    • Using the Visual SourceSafe Explorer
    • Creating Your First VSS Project
    • Using the Integrated SourceSafe Tools in Visual Studio .NET
    • Viewing the History of a File in SourceSafe
    • Opening an Existing SourceSafe Project
    • Adding New Project Items or Projects
    • Renaming Projects or Project Items
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Exercises
  • Day 21. Object Role Modeling with Visio
  • Week 3. In Review

Using the Visual SourceSafe Explorer

The Visual SourceSafe Explorer is the main application for managing projects under source code control. Using this tool, all the features of VSS are available to you. Figure 20.2 shows the VSS Explorer after a new installation of SourceSafe, with no projects under source control.

Figure 20.2 The Visual SourceSafe Explorer.

When you install VSS for Visual Studio .NET, most of the features available to you in the Explorer are integrated into the Visual Studio .NET IDE. This includes creating new projects, checking files in and out, and viewing file history. The reason to use the Explorer is if you're in a multiuser environment and you need to determine which developers have items checked out, to get an overall view of the state of a project by running reports, or to perform tasks that aren't available in the Visual Studio .NET IDE.

From the Explorer, you can also merge or branch projects and files. When you merge a file, the differences in two or more changed copies of a file are merged into a new version of the file. A merge involves at least two different files, which can be different versions of the same file or changes made to the same version of the file, and creates a new file made up of the results of the merge. Merging can occur when the user merges two branches or when the Check In or Get Latest Version command is used. Branching is the process of sharing a file with another project and then separating it into two or more branches. When you create a branch, the file in the project and its counterpart in other projects have a shared history up to the point of the branch, but they maintain separate history files after that point. Merging and branching are two of the more powerful file management features in VSS.

For today, you aren't going to use any of the external GUI features of VSS. Everything you do is from within the Visual Studio .NET IDE.

Share This