Did you know, theres a GitHub repo called [you-poor-bastard](https://github.com/SirkleZero/you-poor-bastard)? It converts a vss repo to git (not very well, but well enough), ignoring the VSS "passwords."

IIRC SourceSafe could be configured with strict locking or advisory locking? I might be wrong about that.

The admin user could override or unlock locked files. We had to do this if a developer left a file checked out after they left, or were on vacation. Nobody knew the admin password for the SourceSafe repository. That was OK though, all you had to do was make a local account on your PC named the same as a the source safe admin acccount, and you'd have admin access in SourceSafe.

> IIRC SourceSafe could be configured with strict locking or advisory locking? I might be wrong about that.

IIRC SourceSafe could be configured with either strict locking (you had to lock a file in order to edit it) or no locking à la SVN (the tool would check if your file was up to date when trying to commit it).

I recall that I spent a while suffering under strict locking at my first internship before a colleague discovered this mode existed and we were able to work more reasonably (there were no editable binary files so locking was never really needed).

We still use VSS for a couple codebases. We’re a small enough team that conflicts are rare, but the occasional Teams message “hey, let me know when you’re done with module.cpp” is not unheard of.

Fascinating. An anachronism worthy of steampunk novels!

I’m impressed VSS still works. I used it as part of my first professional software engineering job in 2008 and it felt old then.

I'm so sorry. We were using it in the late 90s, and on a monthly basis it would be down for a day or two while the admin plunged out the database. Good times.

It surprisingly works well. We do use a front end to it called VssConnect, but to be honest, I really don’t have any complaints.