Telelogic Synergy Terms for VSS (Visual Source Safe) users

Many a times the most difficult thing in using a new Configuration Management (CM) tool is understanding its terminology. It would be easier to switch tools if there was some kind of mapping to what we are already used to.  Visual Source Safe is very commonly used in a Windows development environment and this page helps map some of the terminology between the two tools.

Before we jump into mapping the terms/ or actions, let’s take a quick look at how a developer or a programmer uses any CM tool. At a very high level, developers go through the following steps:

1. Identify the source code to begin work from.
2. Copy the source code locally to his or her working folder .
3. Check-out the source files that need modification.
4. Make changes to the files, add or delete files.
5. Unit Test the changes made to make sure his or her modifications are appropriate.
6. Check-in the files that were modified so that it can be included or integrated with modifications from other developers.
7. End of development cleanup activities and preparation for the next cycle.

Step 1and 2 above are performed usually at the beginning of a development cycle and steps 3 through 6 happen on a regular basis during the development cycle. Step 7 is performed when the development cycle is completed and the developers are now working on a newer development stream.

If you are VSS user, steps 1 and 2 would be performed by:

• Identify the Project to begin work from.
• ‘Get Latest Version’ to build tree under the working folder.

When using Telelogic Synergy, steps 1 and 2 above would be performed by:

• Identify Project name and Baseline to begin work from.
• ‘Copy Project’ to create a work-area.

Those two map one to one in both the tools. The benefit here in using Telelogic Synergy is that the Synergy repository now ‘knows’ that the developer has created a work-area for the project and keeps track of the configuration of the developers copy of the project.

Once the initial working folder in VSS is created, the commands for steps 3 through 6 in VSS that will be used by developers are:

• ‘Get Latest version’ – to update his/her working folder to get the latest and greatest
• ‘Check-out’ files
• Make changes
• Unit Test
• ‘Check-in’ files  

These steps are very similar to what a developer would be doing if we switched the CM tool to Telelogic Synergy and they are:

• ‘Create New Task’ or ‘Select Assigned Task‘ and set as current task
• ‘Update’ his/her project to update your work-area to get the most appropriate configuration
• ‘Checkout’ Files
• Make Changes
• Unit Test
• ‘Complete Task’ (Not check-in individual Files) 

You would notice that the additional step in Telelogic Synergy is to select a ‘Task‘. Telelogic Synergy uses tasks to group changes/modifications that belong together. There are a lot of benefits in using ‘Task BasedCM’ and will be discussed in another post. 

Finally, performing step 7 in VSS at the end of a development cycle will be done by:

• Delete the working folder from the previous development stream
• Identify the Next Project to begin work from
• ‘Get Latest Version’ to build tree under the newly identified working folder

and to perform these steps in Telelogic Synergy, the developer would simply:

• Modify the ‘Update Release‘ on his/her working project to the new release (new development stream)
• ‘Update’ his/her Project to update the work-area 

So, it is as easy as that to go from VSS to Telelogic Synergy with all the benfits of Task Based CM Synergy has to offer.