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Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

danielsada.tech

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Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#141

Post by mschuster91 »

canucker2016 wrote: post #123
RyJones wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably. A lot of people really loved MSMAIL; not so much Exchange. I have more long, boring stories about projects there, but that’s for another day

And sometimes they loved MSMAIL for the weirdest reasons... MSMAIL was designed for Win3.x. Apps didn't have multiple threads. The MSMAIL client app that everyone used would create the email to be sent and store the email file on the system. An invisible app, the Mail Pump, would check for email to be sent and received during idle time (N.B. Other apps could create/send emails via APIs, so you couldn't have the email…

> A few users complained that Exchange, in essence, was too fast.

That is something that's actually pretty common and called "benevolent deception" - it has been discussed on HN some years past, too [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16289380

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#142

Post by mmastrac »

tamlin wrote: post #139
0points wrote: post #130

Having used vss in the 90s myself, it surprised me it wasn't even mentioned. VSS (Visual SourceSafe) being Microsoft's own source versioning protocol, unlike Source Depot which was licensed from Perforce.

Yes, I used VSS as a solo developer in the 90s. It was a revelation at the time. I met other VCS systems at grad school (RCS, CVS). I started a job at MSFT in 2004 and I recall someone explaining that VSS was unsafe and prone to corruption. No idea if that was true, or just lore, but it wasn't an option for work anyway.

We used to call it Visual Source Unsafe because it was corrupting repos all the time.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#143

Post by dagw »

pjc50 wrote: post #124
codeulike wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used it. We knew no better. It was different then, you might not hear about alternatives unless you went looking for them. Source Safe was integrated with Visual Studio so was an obvious choice for small teams. Get this; if you wanted to change a file you had to check it out. It was then locked and no-one else could change it. Files were literally read only on your machine unless you checked them out. The 'one at…

The lock approach is still used in IC design for some of the Cadence/Synopsis data files which are unmergable binaries. Not precisely sure of the details but I've heard it from other parts of the org.

A lot of engineering is the same. You cannot diff and merge CAD files, so you lock them.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#144

Post by sumtechguy »

tamlin wrote: post #139
0points wrote: post #130

Having used vss in the 90s myself, it surprised me it wasn't even mentioned. VSS (Visual SourceSafe) being Microsoft's own source versioning protocol, unlike Source Depot which was licensed from Perforce.

Yes, I used VSS as a solo developer in the 90s. It was a revelation at the time. I met other VCS systems at grad school (RCS, CVS). I started a job at MSFT in 2004 and I recall someone explaining that VSS was unsafe and prone to corruption. No idea if that was true, or just lore, but it wasn't an option for work anyway.

The integration with sourcesafe and all of the tools was pretty cool back then. Nothing else really had that level of integration at the time. However, VSS was seriously flakey. It would corrupt randomly for no real reason. Daily backups were always being restored in my workplace. Then they picked PVCS. At least it didnt corrupt itself.

I think VSS was fine if you used it on a local machine. If you put it on a network drive things would just flake out. It also got progressively worse as newer versions came out. Nice GUI, very straight forward to teach someone how to use it (checkout file, change, check in like a book), random corruptions about sums up VSS. That checkin/out model seems simpler for people to grasp. The virtual/branch systems most of the other ones use is kind of a mental block for many until they grok it.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#146

Post by bananaboy »

gmueckl wrote: post #28
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.

Perforce is convoluted and confusing, but I don't think it's really fair to call it stupid. It is still virtually unmatched in a couple of areas.

I would say it's no more convoluted and confusing than git. I used Perforce professionally for quite a few years in gamedev, and found that a bit confusing at first. Then I was self-employed and used git, and coming to git from Perforce I found it very confusing at first. But then I grew to love it. Now I'm back to working for a big gamedev company and we use Perforce and I feel very proficient in both.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#148

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

dgellow wrote: post #111
AdamN wrote: post #102

I feel like we're well into the longtail now. Are there other SCM systems or is it the end of history for source control and git is the one and done solution?

Perforce is used in game dev, animation, etc. git is pretty poor at dealing with lots of really large assets

I've heard this about game dev before. My (probably only somewhat correct) understanding is it's more than just source code--are they checking in assets/textures etc? Is perforce more appropriate for this than, say, git lfs?

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#149

Post by PretzelPirate »

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.

I miss CodeFlow everyday. It was such a great tool to use.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#150

Post by noitpmeder »

2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote: post #117

Always nice to read a new retelling of this old story. TFA throws some shade at how "a single get of the office repo took some hours" then elides the fact that such an operation was practically impossible to do on git at all without creating a new file system (VFS). Perforce let users check out just the parts of a repo that they needed, so I assume most SD users did that instead of getting every app in the Office sui…

My firm still uses perforce and I can't say anyone likes it at this point. You can almost see the light leaves the eyes of new hires when you tell them we don't use git like the rest of the world.
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