A number of clients I do offsite consulting work for use SourceGear Vault as their source code control (SCC) program. I'm a big fan of Vault - it's easy to use remotely over HTTP or HTTPS, integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio, and provides all of the standard SCC features (history, diff, rollback, branching, labels, and so forth).
The only complaint I have about Vault is with the Vault Client. As the Vault Server software has evolved, its protocol has changed. This is understandable. In adding new features and squashing old bugs, I could see how the low-level communication protocol between the client and server might need to change over time.
Fine. But what's annoying as all else is that the clients are not backwards compatible. That is, if I have one customer that uses Vault Server 4.0 and another that uses Vault Server 3.0 (which are two versions that use different protocols), in an ideal world I'd be able to use the latest client software (Vault Client 4.0) and it would be smart enough to use the appropriate protocol depending on the server I connect to.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Instead, I need to fire up Vault Client 4.0 when working with customer A and Vault Client 3.0 when working with customer B. It is quite possible to install multiple versions of the Vault Client on the same machine in different directories (like C:\Program Files\SourceGear\Vault 3.0 and C:\Program Files\SourceGear\Vault 4.0), but the real kicker comes when you throw Visual Studio integration into the mix. Visual Studio identifies the SCC provider it uses through a registry setting. In short, this means when I want to work with customer A I need to edit the registry so that it points to the Vault Client 4.0 executable in C:\Program Files\SourceGear\Vault 4.0. When I need to switch over to working with customer B's code base, I need to go back into the registry and modify that setting to point to the Vault 3.0 executable in C:\Program Files\SourceGear\Vault 3.0. (In actuality, I have one customer that uses 3.0, one that uses 3.5, and one that uses 4.0, all of which require different protocols, different client executables, and registry modifications when switching from one customer to another.)
The side-by-side installation process and registry keys that need to be modified are detailed here: Installing Multiple Versions of the Vault Client.
To help expedite the process of modifying the registry settings, I created .reg files that enable me to modify the registry setting by double-clicking the .reg file (rather than having to use regedit). Simply create a file for each Vault version you need to use with .reg extensions - like Vault_3_0.reg, Vault_3_5.reg, and so on - and then edit them with Notepad, entering the following text:
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SourceGear\Vault Client]
"SCCServerPath"="pathToVauleIDEFile"
The particular path to the Vault IDE file depends on the version and where you installed the file. See Installing Multiple Versions of the Vault Client for more information.