Korby Parnell blogs about some new VSS features coming in Whidbey.

I can now confirm that a new version of Visual SourceSafe will be included in the Whidbey release of Visual Studio.

Here are a handful of previously-unannounced features and feature enhancements that you can expect to see in the next version of Microsoft Visual SourceSafe:

• Remote Access -- The new version of VSS will support remote access through firewalls via https.  This is similar to an Outlook 2003 feature that enables people to access mail outside the firewall, without RAS.  Remote access makes working from a remote location much easier. This includes remote teams (for example, with offshore development) as well as simpler scenarios like telecommuting or doing development work while traveling.

• Performance, Scalability, andProductivity-- The new version of Visual SourceSafe will include improved performance and scalability for large projects and will make common operations faster and asynchronous, so you can start working more quickly on large projects and be productive while source control transfers are taking place.

• Other New Features -- SourceSafe Whidbey will include improved merging UI, support for Unicode file content viewing and merging, re-vamped source control for web service and web site projects, and a “check out local version” feature.

• Future Announcements -- We will provide more information about the next version of SourceSafe in the coming months.