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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

#231

Post by meepmorp »

mmastrac wrote: post #142
tamlin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

iirc, we called it visual source shred

kinda nice to know it wasn't just our experience

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#232

Post by meepmorp »

robin_reala wrote: post #133
namdnay wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a big commercial SCM at the time that had this as an option, when you wanted to make sure you wouldn’t need to merge. Can’t remember what it was called, you could “sync to file system” a bit like dropbox and it required teams of full time admins to build releases and cut branches and stuff . Think it was bought by IBM?

I guess you’re talking about Rational Rose? I had the misfortune of using that at my first industry job (fintech in 2004).

Rose is a UML modeling tool

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#233

Post by Vilian »

Marsymars wrote: post #180
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the same internal sender sends both irrelevant and important messages, it'll be pretty hard or impossible to filter. My #1 method of keeping my inbox clean, is unsubscribing from newsletters.

Our HR lady took personal offence when I asked to be unsubscribed from the emails about “deals” that employees have access to from corporate partners. :(

You can set custom rules in thunderbird to deal with specific mails, like tagging it as a "sale" or just deleting it based on regex

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#234

Post by kmoser »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #171
kmoser wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody gets important emails, and it's literally part of their job to filter the wheat from the chaff. One of my benchmarks for someone's competency is their ability to manage information. With a combination of email filters and mental discipline, even the most busy inbox can be manageable. But this is an acquired skill, akin to not getting lost in social media, and some people are far better at it than others.

If the same internal sender sends both irrelevant and important messages, it'll be pretty hard or impossible to filter. My #1 method of keeping my inbox clean, is unsubscribing from newsletters.

Yes, the last filter is always the human being who has to deal with whatever the computer couldn't automate. But even then, you should be able to skim an email and quickly determine its relevancy, and decide whether you need to take action immediately, can leave it for the future, or can just delete it. Unless you're getting thousands of emails a day, this should be manageable.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#235

Post by bariumbitmap »

> In the early 2000s, Microsoft faced a dilemma. Windows was growing enormously complex, with millions of lines of code that needed versioning. Git? Didn’t exist. SVN? Barely crawling out of CVS’s shadow.

I wonder if Microsoft ever considered using BitKeeper, a commercial product that began development in 1998 and had its public release in 2000. Maybe centralized systems like Perforce were the norm and a DVCS like BitKeeper was considered strange or unproven?

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#236

Post by wslh »

bariumbitmap wrote: post #235

> In the early 2000s, Microsoft faced a dilemma. Windows was growing enormously complex, with millions of lines of code that needed versioning. Git? Didn’t exist. SVN? Barely crawling out of CVS’s shadow. I wonder if Microsoft ever considered using BitKeeper, a commercial product that began development in 1998 and had its public release in 2000. Maybe centralized systems like Perforce were the norm and a DVCS like Bi…

There was SourceSafe (VSS) around that time and TFVC afterwards.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#237

Post by chiph »

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.

VSS was picked up via the acquisition of One Tree Software in Raleigh. Their product was SourceSafe, and the "Visual" part was added when it was bundled with their other developer tools (Visual C, Visual Basic, etc). Prior to that Microsoft sold a version control product called "Microsoft Delta" which was expensive and awful and wasn't supported on NT.

One of the people who joined Microsoft via the acquisition was Brian Harry, who led the development of Team Foundation Version Control (part of Team Foundation Server - TFS) which used SQL Server for its storage. A huge improvement in manageability and reliability over VSS. I think Brian is retired now - his blog at Microsoft is no longer being updated.

From my time using VSS, I seem to recall a big source of corruption was it's use of network file locking over SMB. If there were a network glitch (common in the day) you'd have to repair your repository. We set up an overnight batch job to run the repair so we could be productive in the mornings.

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#238

Post by Degorath »

noitpmeder wrote: post #150
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.

Can't say anything about perforce as I've never used it, but I'd give my left nut to get Google's Piper instead of git at work :)

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#239

Post by robin_reala »

meepmorp wrote: post #232
robin_reala wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you’re talking about Rational Rose? I had the misfortune of using that at my first industry job (fintech in 2004).

Rose is a UML modeling tool

Oops, it was ClearCase that was Rational’s SCM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DevOps_Code_ClearCase

Re: Microsoft Office migration from Source Depot to Git

#240

Post by Marsymars »

Vilian wrote: post #233
Marsymars wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our HR lady took personal offence when I asked to be unsubscribed from the emails about “deals” that employees have access to from corporate partners. :(

You can set custom rules in thunderbird to deal with specific mails, like tagging it as a "sale" or just deleting it based on regex

Yeah, I ended up doing that with Outlook.

I also set up a rule to auto-delete phishing test emails based on their headers, which annoyed the security team.

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