VSS 2005 Upgrade

So while we’re trying to decide what do do with source control long-term, we figured we’d take VSS 2005 for a test run – just to see if it’d hold us over for a while. 

The main thing we’re missing right now is access over http for our remote crew.  Sure there are some nifty tools for VSS over http, but VSS 2005 has it built-in.

The good: VSS 2005 client sure is purty.  It’s definitely a little slicker, and the branching/merging seems a bit smarter (it couldn’t get worse, right?).  Seems to run faster too, which is nice.

The bad: Turns out, you need to use the latest VStudio (2005) client to access the repository over http.  Pretty lame, you’d think you could at least just use the VSS client.  I suppose since it’s really just exposed as a web service, someone’ll make a better interface to it, but I haven’t seen it yet.

The ugly:  Took me about 3 days to get the darn thing runnin.  For some (as yet unknown reason), VSS and IIS just would not play nicely together.  After a couple days and a few unfruitful hours on the phone with MSFT techs, I decided to just install it on another machine (an IIS box built to the same specs as the first one, just without anything on it yet).  20 minutes later it was up and runnin… go figure.