We're proud to announce the release of a major new version of our longest-standing tool, SourceOffSite. As ever, SourceOffSite is the way to access your SourceSafe data quickly and securely, locally or over the internet. But SoS 5 brings things squarely into the 21st century, with more power, more speed, and a completely revamped user interface.

A Brand New Interface

The SOS 5 client has been rewritten from the ground up. It looks, feels, and behaves like a modern, powerful Source Control client — which is just what it is. SOS 5 lets you open multiple tabs, to see simultaneous history views, search results, and project listings all at once.

All of your activities are launched from a clear, modern, easy-to-navigate toolbar. You’ll hardly believe you’re working with SourceSafe.

Working Smarter

The redesign is not just a "re-skin" — it's all aimed at helping you get your work done faster and more easily.

SOS 5’s Pending Check-ins view shows you all of your works-in-progress, across all folders, in one place. One place to view the list, one place to check them in.

SOS 5 also gives you one window to find and manage your Working Folder settings, one-click shares of folders and trees, and more.

Faster and More Reliable

SOS 5 is the fastest SourceOffSite yet — often 10x faster, or more — with serious upgrades on the stability and robustness fronts, as well.

How It Works

SourceOffSite consists of a Server and a Client. They can communicate over any standard TCP/IP connection, including a PPP connection over a modem, an ISDN line, or an Ethernet connection on the same LAN as the Server. SourceOffSite does not require Windows Remote Access Service (RAS).

SourceOffSite is designed with a client-server architecture to facilitate remote version control. It is up to 12 times faster than Visual SourceSafe over RAS.

Server

The Server is installed on the machine with access to the file system on which the Visual SourceSafe database resides. Once installed there, the Server provides access to Visual SourceSafe operations to Clients that connect using any standard TCP/IP connection.

The Server requires .NET 3.5, and can therefore be installed on systems running Windows Server^TM2003, Windows Server^TM 2008, Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. It runs in the background with no user interface of any kind. Configuration of the Server is accomplished through the Server Manager utility.

The SourceOffSite Server does not necessarily need to be installed on the machine where the VSS database resides. It can be installed on a different machine from the one hosting the VSS database, as long as they are both on the same LAN. However, the SourceOffSite Server does use the Visual SourceSafe Automation component (APIs). Thus, the Visual SourceSafe Client component must be installed on the server machine hosting the SourceOffSite Server. Installing the Visual SourceSafe Client also installs the Visual SourceSafe APIs.

Client

The SourceOffSite Client is a Microsoft 2007 Office Fluent UI designed application that provides all major Visual SourceSafe Explorer functionality. Visual SourceSafe users should find the SourceOffSite Client to be familiar and easy to use. Users can perform almost all Visual SourceSafe operations in a similar fashion. These operations include:

Create Project
Add Files
Delete Files or Projects
Get Latest Version
Check Out
Check In
Undo Check Out
Share
Branch
View
Edit
Merge
Show Differences
Show Properties
Show History
Status Search
Cloak
Web deploy
Label Version
Pin Files
Rename
Move
Set Working Folder
Refresh File List
Refresh Project Tree
Cancel Operation.

The SourceOffSite Client can connect to any SourceOffSite Server by simply specifying the location of that server (a host name or IP address, and a port number). SourceOffSite Clients are available for Windows XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 platforms. Linux and Solaris users may still use SourceOffSite 4.2 to connect to SourceOffSite 5.0 servers.

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