Looking at Visual Sourcesafe vs. Perforce in a higher level

These days I haven’t got much works, but some trainings going on in the new place. Couple of days ago Vidura (my project manager) gave me and couple of other new guys a training on their SCM (Software Configuration Management). It’s Perforce they are using which is a brand new thing to me. In my old place we were using Visual Sourcesafe although it’s giving us lots of problems. As all we know Sourcesafe is good for small projects which get small code base and all the members are in a small intranet. When network is going busy Sourcesafe is messing all the things up and be the Source(un)safe.

There are lots of similarities in Sourcesafe and Perforce I noticed. But it’s easy to point out differences than similarities. Main differences I noticed are

1. Perforce keeps work space (working folder in Source Safe) information in the server but Sourcesafe in the client machine.

2. Perforce has Atomic Commits (this is implemented via change lists) when we checking in files but Sourcesafe hasn’t got.

There are other additions which both softwares have but these two are the main architectural differences I think.

Anyway I don’t think it’s fair to compare these two softweares by myself only since I haven’t got experience with Perforce. So check following links that would give you the whole picture on Sourcesafe vs. Perforce.

And great thing is Perforce is free for 2 user license. So you can use this great software in the home for your SCM.

http://www.perforce.com/perforce/sourcesafe.html
http://www.keysolutions.com/blogs/kenyee.nsf/d6plinks/KKYE-6PHRH8