Collaborative Development Models

[piet]

Hi,

I hope I have the right forum to post this question. I tried looking for a Visual Studio forum, which would seem more appropriate, but couldn't find one.

Currently their are two programmers in our company and we will probably be adding more. We are redeveloping our web site in C# using Visual Studio. We have a development server, a production server, and a few database servers.

We wan't to be able to set up a collaborative place where our two programmers can store the files in one place but work locally at their workstations. I believe we want to use the "File Share" Web Access Method and an Isolated Development Model.

Here are my questions:

1. Do I create a Solution or a Project in VS.NET? The two programmers will be developing many disparating parts of the web site so it seems to me that the web site as a whole is the Solution and each programmer will work on their own Projects. Is this correct?

2. Assuming I need to make a Solution, what would the value of the location field be when I create a "New -> Blank Solution"? It looks like it is asking for a drive letter, but don't I want this to be on our development server? So would that field look like //developmentserver/solutionName?

Sorry, but this Solution/Project concept is new to me. Any help or additional information about developing in a Collaborative environment would be appreciated.

Piet

[MRutledge]

Take a look at these links, they describe how to set up a team development environment

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/tdlg_rm.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vetchWebProjectsSourceControlIntegrationInVisualStudioNET.asp

[piet]

MRutledge,

Thanks for the articles. I read through both of those yesterday and today, I understand the concept but I am still really confused about how to implement it.

First, I am able to create a Blank Solution on our file server (should I have created it on our web development server?). I called this solution "WebSiteSolution". Next when I try to create a project, it tells me to save it in my http://localhost directory. Why does it not create it on my shared sever as a child of the Solution? If it's created on http://localhost then how do other programmers access it? Lastly, how does the rest of the company access the site from a browser if it's sitting on a file server?

Am I doing something incorrect? By the way, we don't have Visual SafeSource.

Piet

[MRutledge]

You are jumping ahead of your self here. First off you need to decide what development model you are going to use, i.e. Isolated, Non-Isolated or Semi-Isolated. This will determine how you create new solutions and where you create them. Then after you have determined that you can create new projects and add them to vss.

[piet]

Yeah, I've determined what I needed from the articles that you included two posts ago.

1. Development Model: Isolated
2. Web Access Method: File Share

Do I need VSS to achieve this? Can I still work collaboratively if I don't have VSS?

[MRutledge]

You will need a source control solution to work collaboratively. It doesnt necesarilly have to be vss.

If you are workin in an isolated model you will need to create the solution and project on your local machine. Once you have done that you can right click on the solution and add it to source control. Then if someone needs to set up the project they will go to file->Source Safe->open from source control and click on the folder in source safe where the solution was added. And that is it.