Three months ago I started to work for a software company.
I am developing an application on a team with two other guys that add and edit dozens of lines of code on a daily basis.

Actually we work on about 200 files for a total of 100,000 lines of Delphi (Object Pascal) code more or less.
The main source code repository is located on an NT server available on the local network. The workstations on which we develop are running Windows 2000 Professional instead.

The editing and the compilation of our files are local (hard drive of each workstation) in order to speed-up the compilation process and of course to be able to work offline, for example in situations when the remote server is not available or in the case I may have to do some homework.

As you will probably imagine the main problem of this approach is to synchronize the source code each developer modifies. Other than this there is the frequent problem of doing the rollback to the previous version of one or more files.

It happened to me many times... I had to modify a file and then regret it. Maybe because the performance got worse, maybe because the modification did not bring to the right result... in a few words, without a version control software it would be a nightmare, believe me!

Not to mention that one of your colleague could overwrite a file on which you worked the entire day :-(

So here it comes SourceSafe to help us on all these software problems that could easily bring to social ones ;-)

SourceSafe creates a database with all the source files and maps the main repository with the local directory you are working on. In this way it establishes a relation between your local files and the official version.

When I have to edit a file I do a check-out so the other developers know about my intentions.

When I am done and satisfied I can perform a check-in in order to copy my file to the main repository. At this point my file is visible to the others.

Of course SourceSafe maintains the history of the file so
all the previous version can be rescued at any time (this is going to take more space on your server though).
I can also do an update operation ("get latest version")
in order to align one or more files with the official version present in the SourceSafe database.

Before doing this though I check that the modifications performed by another developer are not going to overwrite mine (if we both worked on the same file).

For this matter SourceSafe can visually show us the differences between the two files ("show differences" command). Very powerful and intuitive indeed.

At the beginning SourceSafe may appear complicated to use; check-in, check-out and many other commands that could result confusing. With some practice all these will become natural and make sense.

If you work on a team this tool is extremely useful, I recommend it. Of course it is Microsoft so you have to pay for it. You may also take a look at CVS that is free and has a Windows client.

If you work alone this tool is still useful for the version control in order to do the rollback when needed.

Recommended: Yes