Visual SourceSafe Project Fundamentals
Visual SourceSafe projects allow you to connect to Microsoft Visual SourceSafe databases.
This product provides excellent source control management features and if very useful in multi-user environments.
Spider Writer's integration with Visual SourceSave lets you check in and out files, among other operations.
Opening Visual SourceSafe Projects
You can open Visual SourceSafe projects using the
Visual SourceSafe Project Wizard,
found on the Environment
menu, under the Open SourceSafe Project command. This wizard guides you through
the process of connecting to a Visual SourceSafe project from a srcsafe.ini file.
See the Visual SourceSafe Project Wizard
topic for more help on opening Visual SourceSafe projects in Spider Writer.
Once you open a Visual SourceSafe project, it appears in the
Environment
sidebar. Spider Writer automatically reopens the projects you left open when you last closed Spider Writer.
Opening Project Files
To open a project file for editing, click on the project folder that contains it in the
Environment
sidebar. It should appear in the file list in the bottom of the sidebar. Double click on the
file to open it. A dialog may prompt you, asking whether you would like a working copy
of a file or a read-only copy. A working copy is an editable version of the file while a
read-only copy cannot be edited. Generally, you must check out a file to obtain a working copy
of it. This is indicated by a check next the file's icon. If a lock icon appears next to the file's icon,
it is read-only. Checking a file back in to the server updates the server with the changes you've
made and releases the working copy of the file.
Root URL Browsing
In the Visual SourceSafe Project Wizard
and the Project Properties
dialogs, you can set a root URL and an option to indicate
that whenever you open a document from a project in Spider Writer
and view it in the browser, it will route the preview through the specified root URL. This is useful
if you are working on a project directly off of a web server and use server-side scripting (such as ASP)
in your pages.
For instance, we at Actipro Software may have a default.asp
document at the root of our spiderwriter.com web site.
Since we want to see the results of the server side code when we work on the document and
we work directly off the server, we set the root URL to be http://www.spiderwriter.com/.
Then when we open the default.asp document in Spider Writer and browse to it,
it really browses to http://www.spiderwriter.com/default.asp.
If you use the root URL browsing feature, make sure that you check in files before browsing to them.
Otherwise the master files will not be updated with your changes.