Using Visual SourceSafe - Pin

Nov 27, 2008

This article is a part of SourceSafe / VSS Tutorial

Pin is a small but sometimes helpful feature in Visual SourceSafe (VSS). VSS defines Pin as a marker that designates a specific version of a file. For example, if we want our team members to get a historical version by default, we can pin the file to the specific version.

Pin is not a native feature in SourceSafe. I usually do not use Pin very often and my personal recommendation is that we should avoid Pin if possible.

Pin has the following features:

When we do Get Latest, for a pinned file, VSS retrieves the pinned version, not the latest version.
We can still get the other versions in the Show History dialog box.
After a file is pinned, the file cannot be modified. We cannot do Check In / Check Out on a pinned file.

To pin a version of a file, please follow steps below:

In Visual SourceSafe (VSS) Explorer, select the file that you want to pin.
On the menu Tools, click Show History, as seen in the following screen shot:

(Show History)

Or right-click the file that you want to pin, and select Show History.

(Show History)

In the History Options dialog box, click OK.

(History Options)

In the History of dialog box, select the version that you want to pin, and then click Pin. A pushpin icon will appear next to the pinned file.

Pin (Pin)