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VisualSVN – An Alternative to Team Foundation Server

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Developers looking for an alternative to Visual SourceSafe have a lot more options than shelling out big bucks for Rational ClearCase or Microsoft's Team Foundation Server. Today we introduce VisualSVN, a commercial Subversion offering.

Usually installing a source control provider is a major endeavor. ClearCase and Team Foundation Server both have a lot of dependencies that have to be manually installed and configured. The VisualSVN company decided to spare its customers that hassle. Their all-in-one Windows Installer package combines Apache, Subversion, and the management tools. With this taken care of, a simple step-by-step guide suffices for setting up actual code repositories.

VisualSVN includes add-ins for all non-Express versions of Visual Studio 2003, 2005, and 2008. Unlike most source control providers, VisualSVN does not support MSSCCI. Citing differences between the SourceSafe and Subversion models, they decided it was not a good fit.

While it does provide a nice GUI and is downright cheap, 49 USD/developer, it ultimately is still just Subversion under the covers. Like any Subversion variant, it suffers all problems of a branch-based source control system.

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