Sometimes features that are otherwise very useful can bite you.  For instance, we maintain a separate source project structure parallel with our automated builds.  This is an easy way to recreate any previous build because welabel the parent project of both with each build.  Get By Label recursively, and you have the solution as it was that day.  You can look at any build and then the associated source code to identify whether a bug was there or perhaps was fixed woth a particualr build.  We use it frequently enough to warrant the extra effort and management required.  I won’t go into the details about how we do it but if you are interested, email me and I’ll tell you…

VSS Keyword Expansion

Visual Sourcesafe will add comments to your code at check in time if configured to do so in srcsafe.ini.   This is useful because it shows a nice file history right in the file header and, if the comments are added during check in, describes the nature of each change.

However, when you execute an automated build and then check that changed file into another project directory, sourcesafe will change the comments and include an entry for the autobuild user.  That isn't desirable because you then get differences between the file in dev/source and the file in build/source.  When you compare project directories to try to identify what changes have been made since the last build (or what changes were not picked up by the build), the added comments trigger a diff.  That is painful because you have to manually check each file to ensure that only comments were changes.

In this newsgroup post, the anser was mentioned in passing and even discouraged in practice. 

Add "Keyword_Masks =" to the ss.ini file for the automated build user.  This will override Keyword Expansion for a user. 

The entry in srcsafe.ini looks something like this:

Keyword_Masks = *.cs, *.htm, *.html, *.aspx, *.ascx
;updates keywords in a user's working directory with the new keyword information
;when a user updates or checks in a file.
Expand_Keywords_Locally = YES

[Keyword Comments]
*.cs = " /// "
*.aspx = " -- "
*.ascx = " -- "

Add this to your user/ss.ini (located whre your sourcesase db resides)

; The following overrides keyword expansion configured in the srcsafe.ini file
Keyword_Masks =

Now, when the user with this override checks in, no change is made to the file.  Diffs will be correct from source to destination