Practical Perforce

In What does Microsoft use for source control ? I mentioned that Microsoft uses a version of Perforce for its internal projects. Perforce’s licensing allows it its product to be used at no cost for up to two users:

You may use software downloaded from Perforce for any purpose you want and for as long as you like, provided no modifications are made to the software. The Perforce Server supports only two users and five client workspaces unless used with a Perforce License.

This makes it ideal for use at home for private projects. If you do this then you might want to buy a copy of Practical Perforce by Laura Wingerd which provides a good introduction to Perforce. Wingerd is VP of Product Technology at Perforce and also contributed a chapter to Beautiful Code.

What does Microsoft use for source control ?

OK, so Team Foundation Server (TFS) has replaced Visual SourceSafe (VSS) as the source code management (SCM) tool in Microsoft’s development toolset. Does Microsoft use TFS on its internal projects ? Yes, and no…

Although Microsoft is increasingly using TFS on its internal projects many teams are still using Source Depot. Haven’t heard of it ? Well, you probably won’t have unless you’ve worked for Microsoft. So, what is Source Depot and why hasn’t Microsoft ever released it as a product ?

Microsoft bought One Tree Software in 1994 for its source control product SourceSafe. This was soon released by Microsoft as Visual SourceSafe 4.0 at the same time as Visual Basic 4.0 in 1995. Visual SourceSafe was used internally by Microsoft but the scale of some internal projects, notably Windows, stretched the capabilities of VSS to the limit and beyond. In 1999 Perforce licenced the source code for its SCM product to Microsoft for internal use only.

Over the past eight years a small team within Microsoft has developed the Perforce source code under the name Source Depot. It continues to be developed and maintained but development teams within Microsoft are now encouraged to use TFS on new projects.

Within Microsoft Source Depot has proved to have the functionality, robustness, and scalability required for developing products such as Windows with thousands of developers working on millions of lines of code. Which is a pretty good recommendation for Perforce.