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.
• Table of Contents
• Index
Sams Teach Yourself Visual Studio® .NET 2003 in 21 Days
By
Jason Beres
Publisher
: Sams Publishing
Pub Date
: January 14, 2003
ISBN
: 0-672-32421-0
Pages
: 696
Sams Teach Yourself Visual Studio .NET in 21 Days will help developers that are new to application development and experienced developers understand how to use the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET to rapidly develop any type of computer application. The Visual Studio .NET development environment is the most comprehensive developer tool ever created, putting that together with the .NET Frameworks' Class Libraries, the developer has everything he or she needs to get up-to-speed on Microsoft's latest revolution in application development. This book will guide the developer through using the VS .NET IDE, the Visual Basic .NET and C# language, and the supporting tools available from Microsoft to create Windows and Web-based applications. The market is full of books that pretty much say the same thing, which is already available in the help files, the author of this book has written and deployed over a dozen successful applications using Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework. All of his expertise and experience is used to give you the most comprehensive title on using Visual Studio .NET.