Hi SourceGear Vault Team,

I'm currently evaluating Vault after spending a whole day installing and configuring TFS2008 and 2010 and giving up on it (got it working, but just too many problems). Then I just tried Vault and installed it in about 2 minutes and everything worked right out of the box as I want it to, wow! I have used Vault a few years back and only remembered that it was too VSS like and kinda slow. But I really like all the configure options, I can set everything I want and much more. Speed also seems to be superb (except startup time), adding about 1000 items over a slow 1mbit internet connection only took a few seconds. And get latest version is about 1 second for everything, a lot faster than Subversion over Internet, which I used before.

Our team will definitely switch to Vault and get rid of TFS and Subversion for Code in the next project I'm actually blogging on this a bit on http//abi.exdream.com
I will wait a bit with my final conclusion blog entry until someone can help me with the issues below.

I have found two annoying things however, maybe someone can help me out with this:

- With all those options and even editing the registry (why don't you put the splash screen option just into the options?) I am totally unable to get rid of the "Get Latest Version" dialog when loading a solution. I activated the "Get everything when opening a solution" in the Source Control - Integration Options because we always want to have the latest version for our project. This works, but the stupid dialog box is not disappearing, I can disable as much as I want in Options, it will always come up when loading a solution (but not when just doing a normal Get Latest Version, that works fine). Is there any way to get the latest version, but not having to confirm this every single time? I open and close solutions quite a lot and I would really like just to work on the project and not think about Source Control until I finally check something in. Another minor annoyance is the Command Dialogs - "Check Out" options, which is just confusing because it always goes back to Checked after I uncheck it and reopen Options.

- While performance is good for my little test project, the startup time is VERY slow. I have been working on a very fast PC with an SSD and everything is almost instant, so waiting for 5 seconds at the startup of Visual Studio instead of less than 0.5s is a big difference! I know that part of the issue is obviously my slow internet connection and using a remote server, but it would be nice if Vault could reduce the amount of calls it has to do. I don't know whats going on, but I guess many of the following things could happen at startup:
- Check for latest version of Vault (disabled it, could not notice any difference, maybe only used in the Vault app)
- Connect to the Vault server (remote in my case, takes more than half of the total time, 2-3s at least, ping is <20ms, so there is probably a lot of back and forth here, maybe the IIS is taking some time, should I optimize anything there?)
- Then my repository is chosen, which I defaulted to something (takes another second)
- And then finally Vault is starting to work and getting everything in less than 1 second.

The second issue is probably not fixable because of the design of Vault, but maybe someone can get me some tips to make the startup times faster for me (I already read through most of the optimization tips, but I could not find much about startup time there, both client and server are pretty fast computers). I'm more interested in a fix for getting rid of the "Get Latest Version" dialog box at startup!

Thanks so much and have a nice Labor Day.
Benjamin Nitschke
exDream GmbH

We do support VS 2010, but haven't had much user feedback about it, so you might be running into something we haven't seen.

Are you using Classic Client integration?

Could you post a screenshot of what you're seeing with the Get Latest dialogue?

Hi Linda,

thanks for the quick reply. Maybe I was not clear above, I'm actually not using VS2010 (just tested it with TFS2010). I just want to use Vault in VS2008!

After testing some other version control systems today I noticed that most MSSCCI plugins have the same issue, it is not possible to disable the "Get Latest Version" startup dialog once enabling "Get everything when opening a solution". Maybe Vault just needs an option for that or has to suppress this dialog by itself (should not be very hard to test, it is just enabling 1 option).

Here is a screenshot since you asked so nicely (I'm using the Vault Enhanced Client btw, but the same happens with the Classic Client). As you can see on the screenshot there is no code behind the window since VS is still loading the solution. Once the solution is loaded, the get latest version dialog disappeared for updates (as specified in options). And again, it takes 5+ seconds for me to even see this Get Latest Version dialog, which is kinda annoying too, but I could live with that if the dialog would just not be there and instead I would have the solution ready to go (then I could do some other things in the meantime and return after 5 seconds of surfing ^^).

PS: I'm currently blogging about my version control system evaluations and SourceGear Vault is the clear winner: http://abi.exdream.com

Thanks,
Benjamin
exDream GmbH

You're right, it's not possible to disable the Get Latest dialog in either Classic or Enhanced client integration.

The "Get everything when opening a solution" functionality was recently added to the Enhanced Client, and since most of the requests for this came from former MSSCCI users, the functionality was implemented in the same way that was in the MSSCCI client. I don't think we have much control over the MSSCCI (or Classic Client,) but I've logged feature request 14801 for the ability to turn off this confirmation dialog in the Enhanced Client.

We appreciate your input, as a particular workflow may not be suitable for all users.

Regarding startup performance, you're right, Vault does a lot of checks when you log into the server and load a project.

To see what's going in your specific situation, it would be helpful to get a copy of the client and corresponding log. Visual Studio logging for the Enhanced Client can be enabled in VS 2008 under Tools->Options->Source Control->Integration Options->Enable diagnostic logging.

Details in this KB article:

viewtopic.php?t=1534

You can enable debug server logging in the Admin Web Client under Server Settings->Logging->Log Level. The the Vault Server log is sgvault.log and is in %windir%\temp\sgvault on the server machine.

Reproduce the login slowdown and send the logs zipped up to support at sourcegear.com, Attn: Linda. Please include a link to this forum post.

Note: it's best for this NOT to be the first login after a Vault Server/IISreset, as the first login after the Vault server has been restarted will generally take longer than subsequent logins.

Okay, I send you an email with the log, but I don't think it will be very helpful, even when using "classesToLog"="all" and enabling everything else in devenv.exe.config it still only says "Login started", then it waits (in my latest test) 10s and then it says "Login finished":

2009-09-08 21:32:33 <connection>: [<No Name>:680] Login started.
2009-09-08 21:32:43 <crypto>: [<No Name>:680] Took 1 tries to
encrypt the password
2009-09-08 21:32:43 <connection>: [<No Name>:680] Login finished.

BTW: The IIS is running fine, it hosts 10+ websites, which all respond in less than 1 second. Also calling /VaultService/Admin is pretty quick, it takes max. 1.3s to load the whole website! While the server is currently doing a lot, it should be still very quick (quad core, 3ghz, 8gb ram, dedicated 2mbit for iis, etc.)

PS: I would still like it very much if the Get Latest Files startup dialog would disappear, is there a way to get notified if and once you might change this?

Kind Regards,
Benjamin

I would still like it very much if the Get Latest Files startup dialog would disappear, is there a way to get notified if and once you might change this?

I added a note to the feature request to notify you if this is implemented. Although it seems like a simple fix, we have to consider all the possible consequences -- files being inadvertently overwritten, etc.