PRB: Branching Files in SourceSafe Causes Lost Disk Space

WINDOWS             | WINDOWS NT          | MS-DOS         | MACINTOSH

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, versions 4.0, 5.0
• Microsoft SourceSafe for Windows, versions 3.04 and 3.1
• Microsoft SourceSafe for Windows NT, versions 3.04 and 3.1
• Microsoft SourceSafe for MS-DOS, versions 3.04 and 3.1
• Microsoft SourceSafe for Macintosh, versions 3.04 and 3.1

SYMPTOMS

Destroying projects and/or files from SourceSafe does not free disk space in SS\DATA subdirectories.

CAUSE

Once a file is branched in SourceSafe, there are four associated files that are not deleted from the disk at this point. The reason this occurs is so the reference between the branch and original file is maintained. There is no way to undo this behavior after the branching has occurred.

RESOLUTION

Use the branching sparingly.

One common practice is to use share and branch to perform a file copy. A better alternative is to share the file or project and destroy the old copy. This preserves the history and allow disk space to be recovered at a later time.

When the history is not needed, get the desired version to a disk location and add the files to the desired project. This gets a clean copy and preserves the ability to recover the disk space at a later time.