Source Control and Visual C# Express

I'm continuing my work on my Arcana Evolved ItemMaker after a long break.

I'm still using C#, but right now I'm considering using this app to learn .NET 3.0 / WinFX / Avalon.

I'm using Visual C# Express, which is pretty nice, but I have one big complaint.

The worst part by far is that, like all of the Express downloads, VC# Express doesn't do plugins. This means that it can't do source control integration, which is a big pain. I'm working around this right now by checking out everything when I want to work, and using Perforce's "Revert Unchanged" feature to clear out the files I didn't edit when I want to check everything in. This works for the ItemMaker, but that's only because it's trivially small now.

ItemMaker now consists of about 10 core classes, plus 6 test classes. I haven't started on the UI yet. So far, that's 16 class files plus associated project files that I check out, revert, and check in every time I make changes. And doing TDD, I make a lot of small changes.

Any software developer needs source control. Joel Spolsky covers why (briefly) in the Joel Test. Eric Sink also has a post about it. If nothing else, source control is a great undo feature. Those changes you made aren't working? Can't remember what you changed? Check source control. Is it still unclear? Revert and start over. Without source control, you don't know where you've been, you don't know exactly what changed, and you certainly can't recover easily from a bad mistake.

I won't even work on small stuff without source control. For the record, I use Perforce at home because the single user license is free. If you are braver than me, or need a multi-user source control system, check out subversion.

I'm really happy that Microsoft released free versions of its compilers, but not being able to use integrated source control is almost a deal breaker. For C# IDEs, my only other (free) choice is Mono. I'm not yet annoyed enough to make the switch.