I'm not one to tout tools developers would use (since I'm not a developer myself), but it just so happens that SourceGear released a new version of it's Vault version/source control server while I am in the process of evaluating it. For those who are wondering what source- and version-control means, well you can skip this. But if you are a user of VSS or CVS or similar (especially VSS), you know what I am talking about.

SourceGear Vault is a version control system for Windows developers, with full integration into the Visual Studio.NET environment. It is implemented entirely on the .NET platform, and uses SQL Server 2000 for its repository storage.

Vault is the only version control system designed specifically to offer a seamless transition from Visual SourceSafe. SourceSafe repositories are imported with no lost data, including history.

The user interface resembles SourceSafe Explorer, and all SourceSafe features are present, including Share and Pin.

And from there the improvements become quite apparent. Face it, VSS sucks as a version/source control product for more than a couple people - It's outdated, limited in capabilities and really is doing more these days than it was ever originally intended to do.

But they can explain it better than I can, so go here and check it out. There's also a list of what's new in this version. Looks nice. I'll have to give it a try.

**EDIT: Price reductions announced, and ****single-user edition **is - get this - FREE.