SourceOffSite for Mac OS X

Ok, today I did something I thought I would never be able to do.

I used SourceOffSite on my Mac to download a source tree. The makers of SourceOffSite have compiled an X-Windows version of their client application for Mac OS X.. It was a bit difficult to install, requiring, first to install Fink and download some unix packages. The detailed instructions were nicely spelled out here (props go to Lee Givens who wrote this):

Step by Step Instructions using Fink to get Needed Libraries

Amazing. It worked great!

For some background, SourceOffSite is a remote client for MS Visual SourceSafe. SourceSafe doesn't cache well and works very poorly when you are not local to the SourceSafe server. My company has purchase in addition to SourceSafe, SourceOffSite server which "mirrors" the SourceSafe repository but works with their own SourceOffSite client to improve performance when away from the local network, such as over a slower VPN connection.

There is currently no Mac OS X SourceSafe client since Metrowerks dropped support for their SourceSafe tools prior to releasing them for Mac OS X. Right now, SourceOffSite is the only way I know of to work with a SourceSafe repository natively on Mac OS X and of course, require that your company is running the SourceOffSite server product. The client is free to download as the licensing is based on the server purchase, and the 4.x client appears to work with the 3.x server.