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Re: Visual SourceSafe for Documentation Source Control
Subject:Re: Visual SourceSafe for Documentation Source Control From:Zbyszek Cybulski <z -dot- cybulski -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 25 Oct 2005 00:00:17 +0200
On 10/24/05, mearro -at- msn -dot- com <mearro -at- msn -dot- com> wrote:
>
> > I was wondering if others have:
> > 2) used a separate source control program for documentation and a separate
> > one for source control
>
> We use Visual SourceSafe for various documents, source code (application &
> help), and to store files included in a specific release.
>
> With VSS, you can compare differences, rollback versions, and share files
> in different directories. Their help would likely give you an idea if it
> meets your needs.
>
Well, I would not recommend VSS as a source control system for .doc files.
The reasons are:
* it has a text diff tool built-in but it fails on comparing binary
files. You can't rely on Word's "diff" feature either, since it fails
when there are more changes than about 100 (empirically observed)
* if the .doc files are pretty fat (mine were 5-10 MB each) and you
check in changed files frequently (about 5 check-ins a day per file),
the VSS database was growing enormously and required very often
repairs. Sometimes, fixing the database didn't help and I had to start
the database from scratch.
Of course, your environment can be different and my objections against
VSS may be irrelevant.
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