Sourcetree vs. Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Sourcetree
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Sourcetree, by Atlassian, is a free version control client for Mac and Windows that works with Git and Mercurial repositories. It's distributed version control allows developers to visualize code, review changesets, stash, cherry-pick between branches or commit with a single click.N/A
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Visual SourceSafe is a discontinued source control software offering, from Microsoft.N/A
Pricing
SourcetreeMicrosoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SourcetreeMicrosoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SourcetreeMicrosoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Considered Both Products
Sourcetree
Chose Sourcetree
VSC is used with the commandline. For a GUI, we didn't look at any other tools besides Sourcetree.
Chose Sourcetree
Free to use, integrated with useful features like Mercurial, Git LFS, submodules etc, helps new user to learn best practices. With all these features along with tools implemented for authentication and securing repos it becomes the best candidate in front of the competition. If …
Chose Sourcetree
I actually recommend Github Desktop for any developer who uses git. It's far more friendly, has good functionality but not overwhelming, and you don't need to use it for github repos.
Sourcetree is only good for if you're wanting to perform complex actions or audit historical …
Chose Sourcetree
Sourcetree allows seamless integration across all widely used GIT services and is cross-platform compatible. This client is capable of managing workflows of any difficulty and its cross-compatibility eliminates the need to use different or multiple GIT clients altogether.
Chose Sourcetree
I tried GitHub Desktop for a couple of days, but it is just not visual enough for me. It has no graph display for branches. Too much clicking is required to get info that the Sourcetree UI shows by default. Sourcetree gives you that "Big Picture" dashboard. GitHub Desktop seems …
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Chose Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Azure DevOps is a much better, more modern tool that Visual SourceSafe and everyone should be moving to it. Most if not all the integration that is there can be done or emulated in it.
Chose Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
We selected Microsoft Visual SourceSafe because at the time none of these other products were out there. Now we are trying to migrate all our legacy code from Visual SourceSafe to Azure DevOps. Unfortunately we don't have a value proposition for some of the older products so …
Chose Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Git is a much more elaborated tool for file versioning than Visual SourceSafe. It has superior performance and stability, it is cross-platform, distributed, it gives you a better User Interface (if you choose to buy Bitbucket), it allows you to have big projects with big teams, …
Features
SourcetreeMicrosoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Version Control Software Features
Comparison of Version Control Software Features features of Product A and Product B
Sourcetree
8.7
Ratings
1% below category average
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Branching and Merging8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Version History10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Version Control Collaboration Tools9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Pull Requests9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Code Review Tools7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Access Control9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated Testing Integration9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue Tracking Integration7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Branch Protection8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
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SourcetreeMicrosoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
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User Ratings
SourcetreeMicrosoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.8
(0 ratings)
3.8
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
4.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SourcetreeMicrosoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
I prefer to work visually and use the tool for merge and rebase operations. It helps when managing a large number of repos.
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The only time I could recommend Microsoft Visual SourceSafe would be for a beginner who has a small amount of code that they would like to keep track of. This solution would not be recommended for an enterprise or any shop where you have multiple developers working on the same solution.
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Pros
  • Allows to manage GIT repositories in an intuitive and simple user interface
  • Visually represents complicated workflows and branching
  • Integrates with most well known GIT repository managing services
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  • avoid losing code
  • versioning of previous projects
  • saving versions on db
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Cons
  • Refreshing of the interface after a commit or merge
  • All elements being consistent with the repo status
  • Select all button on Trach status on different branches
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  • Becoming corrupt and having to be rebuild from a previous version.
  • It can be extremely slow to check in & out of.
  • Lost support several years ago from Microsoft.
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Usability
We help new users onboard quickly and then use Sourcetree to handle their day-to-day SCM needs for managing CIs (Configuration Items). We can visually show management the branching and commit history to show the flow and pace of development.
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Overall Microsoft Visual Source Safe is very easy to use. It is a simple application that does only one thing. It has the basic windows tree structure for listing projects and solutions. There is no way to search for a particular file, project or solution. There is also no way to search the code in the files.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
There is no longer support for Visual SourceSafe as I believe it's been retired. There are, however, users that still use the tool and they do help if there are questions or complaints.
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Alternatives Considered
I tried GitHub Desktop for a couple of days, but it is just not visual enough for me. It has no graph display for branches. Too much clicking is required to get info that the Sourcetree UI shows by default. Sourcetree gives you that "Big Picture" dashboard. GitHub Desktop seems unfinished to me due to its lack of this overview screen.
Read full review
Azure DevOps is a much better, more modern tool that Visual SourceSafe and everyone should be moving to it. Most if not all the integration that is there can be done or emulated in it
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • In my experience, using Sourcetree actually slows down development if you're the average developer needing to do simple git actions. Getting set up is fast, but the learning curve to use the tool is just too steep if you're just looking to push, pull, commit, branch etc.
  • Sourcetree is not implemented by default at our company, but is recommended as we primarily use Atlassian products. However the lack of integration with other Atlassian products means that this git GUI doesn't give any more or less ROI for your Atlassian ecosystem compared to another git GUI tool.
  • For auditing and exploring history Sourcetree can be very helpful. Having all of this information in one place with a plethora of actions and tools at your disposal means you can audit repos much quicker than any other git GUI or online repo explorer.
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  • When we started using it, it allowed us to do source code versioning and store the code in a centralized location and not locally.
  • We are using it for very few projects with few developers that still maintain those applications and do not have time to merge the source code to Git.
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ScreenShots