Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

danielsada.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 290 posts

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#51

Post by tikkabhuna »

com2kid wrote: post #8
pm90 wrote: post #5

Its oddly fascinating that Microsoft has managed to survive for so long with ancient/bad tools for software engineering. Almost like “life finds a way” but for software dev. From the outside it seems like they are doing better now after embracing OSS/generic dev tools.

At one point source depot was Toincredibly advanced, and there are still features that it had that git doesn't. Directory mapping being a stand out feature! Being able to only pull down certain directories from a depot and also remap where they are locally, and even have the same file be in multiple places. Makes sharing dependencies across multiple projects really easy, and a lot of complicated tooling around "monor…

I never understood the value of directory mapping when we used Perforce. It only seemed to add complexity when one team checked out code in different hierarchies and then some builds worked, some didn’t. Git was wonderful for having a simple layout.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#52

Post by pianoben »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #36

I’d like to know when Microsoft internally migrated away from Visual SourceSafe… They should have recalled it to avoid continued public use…

I don't know that they ever used it internally, certainly not for anything major. If they had, they probably wouldn't have sold it as it was...

Can't explain TFS though, that was still garbage internally and externally.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#53

Post by RandallBrown »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #36

I’d like to know when Microsoft internally migrated away from Visual SourceSafe… They should have recalled it to avoid continued public use…

I doubt most teams ever used it.

I spent a couple years at Microsoft and our team used Source Depot because a lot of people thought that our products were special and even Microsoft's own source control (TFS at the time) wasn't good enough.

I had used TFS at a previous job and didn't like it much, but I really missed it after having to use Source Depot.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#54

Post by mattgrice »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #36

I’d like to know when Microsoft internally migrated away from Visual SourceSafe… They should have recalled it to avoid continued public use…

Around 2000? The only project I ever knew that used it was .NET and that was on SD by around then.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#55

Post by sciencesama »

azhenley wrote: post #7

I spent nearly a week of my Microsoft internship in 2016 adding support for Source Depot to the automated code reviewer that I was building ( https://austinhenley.com/blog/featurestheywanted.html ) despite having no idea what Source Depot was! Quite a few devs were still using it even then. I wonder if everything has been migrated to git yet.

Naah still a lot of stuff works on sd !! Those sd commands and setting up sd gives me chills !!

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#56

Post by pianoben »

dboreham wrote: post #32
dangus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s not forget that Microsoft developed a lot of tools in the first place, as in, they were one of the companies that created things that didn’t really exist before Microsoft created them. Git isn’t even very old, it came out in 2005. Microsoft Office first came out in 1990. Of course Office wasn’t using git.

Some examples would be useful here. Not knocking MS tools in general but are there any that were industry fists? Source code control for example existed at least since SCCS which in turn predates Microsoft itself.

Of course that's only half the story - Microsoft invents amazing things, and promptly fails to capitalize on them.

AJAX, that venerable piece of kit that enabled every dynamic web-app ever, was a Microsoft invention. It didn't really take off, though, until Google made some maps with it.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#57

Post by masklinn »

dshacker wrote: post #40
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #36

I’d like to know when Microsoft internally migrated away from Visual SourceSafe… They should have recalled it to avoid continued public use…

I didn't even know Microsoft SourceSafe existed.

Lucky you. Definitely one of the worst tools I’ve had the displeasure of working with. Made worse by people building on top of it for some insane reason.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#58

Post by senderista »

pm90 wrote: post #5

Its oddly fascinating that Microsoft has managed to survive for so long with ancient/bad tools for software engineering. Almost like “life finds a way” but for software dev. From the outside it seems like they are doing better now after embracing OSS/generic dev tools.

Google used Perforce for years and I think Piper still has basically the same interface? So no, MSFT wasn’t ridiculously behind the times by using Source Depot for so long.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#59

Post by senderista »

tikkabhuna wrote: post #51
com2kid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point source depot was Toincredibly advanced, and there are still features that it had that git doesn't. Directory mapping being a stand out feature! Being able to only pull down certain directories from a depot and also remap where they are locally, and even have the same file be in multiple places. Makes sharing dependencies across multiple projects really easy, and a lot of complicated tooling around "monor…

I never understood the value of directory mapping when we used Perforce. It only seemed to add complexity when one team checked out code in different hierarchies and then some builds worked, some didn’t. Git was wonderful for having a simple layout.

You might feel differently if you worked on just a few directories in a giant repo. Sparse client views were a great feature of SD.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#60

Post by HideousKojima »

broodbucket wrote: post #26
90s_dev wrote: post #14

I actually remember using Perforce back in like 2010 or something. And I can't remember why or for which client or employer. I just remember it was stupid.

There's still a lot of Perforce around. I've thankfully managed to avoid it but I have plenty of friends in the industry who still have to use it.

Perforce is still widely used in the game industry
Post reply on HN