Visual studio 2008 and Visual source safe 2005 .. Integration very slow...

Question

Hi all,

We have a source safe database that is hosted on an external server which we link to via VPN.

Whenever i open a solution using visual studio 2008, it is taking literally ages for the project to become usable. The files appear really quickly in the IDE window, but then I get a wait cursor, and an "Updating source control status" message at which point the IDE is fozen. It can literally take 30 mins for the projects to open completely, and become usable.

Then to add insult to injury, if i expand any of the project trees to see the actual files I get another 5 minutes of frozen IDE and the "Updating source control status" message again. Once I have expanded all the project tree's at least once, I can finally get some dev done, albeit around an hour after i sat down to do some work.

It is not a small solution containing, 8 projects, and around 5-600 files altogether. So i'm not expecting it to be lightning, but I am not expecting the delays i am seeing. It is unusable at the moment and really frustrating.

When I open the solution I can measure the traffic down the VPN and it seems very slow at around 6kbps up/down the line. the vpn is definately not slow, if I copy a file across the vpn using explorer, i get around 4-500 kbps, so i don't think it's a vpn issue. I have diabled all firewalls at both ends, and have even tried going back to ss6.0d but the problem is the same.

Interestingly, visual studio 2003 seems fine, it's still quite slow, but it becomes usable in 1-2 minutes, and then does not freeze again.

There is also nothing else running on the server, so it's not a server loading issue either.

Has anyone else come across this problem, or know of any solutions, or even anyway to find out what is going on behind the scenes.

Thanks in advance,
SRigga.

Answer 1

The LAN plugin is not at all optimized for VPN connections.  I would use the Internet plugin instead.  See here for setup instructions: http://alinconstantin.homeip.net/webdocs/scc/VSS_Internet.htm

Answer 2

I'm not sure i understand the "not at all optimised for VPN connections" bit. Surely a VPN connection is in effect just an extension of a LAN.

I'm just puzzled as to why when I have a very fast VPN connection to the server, that the traffic down the line is so small when utilising source safe through visual studio.

We would prefer not to use Source Ssafe over http, but given that over a VPN it is unusable then I guess we have no choice if we wish to continue using Source Safe.

SR.

Answer 3

SRigga wrote:

I'm not sure i understand the "not at all optimised for VPN connections" bit. Surely a VPN connection is in effect just an extension of a LAN.

Further, I've found that accessing the same SS database, on the same server, using an identical VPN connection, yet with both a slower computer and a slower internet connection, is perfectly workable - a bit slower than with VS2003, but not so slow as to be unbearable.

Why would it be fast enough to be perfectly usable for one user, and completely unusable for another?  SRigga and I have spend a lot of time trying to work out what could possibly be different between our installations, and found nothing.

Answer 4

What puzzles me is your saying that IDE freezes when scci is updating scci status.

With VSS2005 the status is get on a background thread - there should be no freeze of the UI unless something else is going on. I can think of:

- you're using by mistake VSS6.0 plugin, that is used by Vs2005 on idle from the main UI thread to get the scc status (this may block intermittently the UI) - make sure you "regsvr32 ssscc.dll" from the VSS2005 folder.

- there is an antivirus running either on server or client that's causing problems. Try disabling it. (Certain versions of NAV and CA eTrust were known historically to produce freezes)

- some component in VS does some work when scci notifies it of updated scc status for files (do you have Vs plugins and 3rd party packages installed?). You can only catch the culprit by attaching a debugger while VS is frozen, breaking in debug and looking at threads callstacks (you'll probably need help from someone in scci team for this)

 

You can also try enabling the LAN booster on the server (SSAdmin/Configure/LAN, enable LAN service) and making sure it's used) - it should speed up getting the status by reducing the number of round trips made to the server.

Answer 5

I am having this exact same issue. . .were you able to resolve it?

Answer 6

Hi all,

I'm having the same problem as SRigga but I used VS2008 and VSS for nearly two weeks without any problems on my computer. Yesterday I installed UltraVNC, DynDNSUpdater and Kaspersky on my workstation. It worked fine. After a reboot this morning, loading a solution in VS2008 or VB6 was nearly impossible. Checking out a small file takes 30sec, before only 1sec. All other connections via VPN are very fast.

I stop Kaspersky, UltraVNC, DynDNSUpdater, WindowsFirewall and WindowsDefender but it is still very slow. Once I got a message that VSS is unable to open the user login file in \data\loggedin, while trying to start VB6. When I closed VS2008 it got the VSS connection but still slow.

Thanks in advance for help!

Alex

Answer 7

Chris5gd said:

SRigga wrote:

I'm not sure i understand the "not at all optimised for VPN connections" bit. Surely a VPN connection is in effect just an extension of a LAN.

Further, I've found that accessing the same SS database, on the same server, using an identical VPN connection, yet with both a slower computer and a slower internet connection, is perfectly workable - a bit slower than with VS2003, but not so slow as to be unbearable.

Why would it be fast enough to be perfectly usable for one user, and completely unusable for another?  SRigga and I have spend a lot of time trying to work out what could possibly be different between our installations, and found nothing.

Are the two users working on the same files/projects? If they are not, I think that is the reason.

In VSS, different files have different history. Accessing a file / project with a long history is slower than accessing a file with only 1 history.



Also, you can take a look at SourceAnywhere for VSS, a VSS remote access tool recommended by Microsoft:
http://www.dynamsoft.com/Products/SAW_Overview.aspx


(I am the designer and architect of SourceAnywhere for VSS and work for Dynamsoft):


Thanks.

-----------------------------
Kevin Gao (MCSD, MCDBA)
www.kevingao.net

Answer 8

I also have a very slow link with VS2005 and Source Safe 6.0, like SRigga and Alex XXX, but being in a company environment, I can't change the source control we use or do anything to the VPN.  It's EXTREMELY frustrating to use SS at all, and I end up breaking my VPN connection just so that Visual Studio will stop trying to update from source control.  Are there any settings I can change in Visual Studio (2005) to stop this rediculous update from source control??

Thanks,
Laura (SeaChangeProgrammer)