Concurent modification of controlled package

[SebastienRoy]

Hello everybody,

I have the following problem:
I have a very large project, available on a shared directory.
Many developpers work on it at the same time
The packages are version controlled, using Visual Source Safe. The local copies of the xmi files are on local directories. Each developper has his own copy of the controlled xmi file.
Everything is ok when the modifications made by separate developpers occurs on separated packages.

But two developpers cannot modify the same package at the same time. Indeed, in order to modify a package, it must be checked out (because it is version controlled). But when a package is already checked out by a user, the other users cannot check it out too (even if SourceSafe can perform multiple check out), so they cannot modify it.
That is a big problem, because when you add a dependency to a package A (for instance add a link from a class of package B to a class of the package A), even you do not really modify the package A, you have to check it out. This his hard to manage for package that many other depends on.

Does someone know how to resolve this problem? How can two developpers modify simultaneously or add simultaneously dependencies to the same package?

Thank you if you have a solution...

Sebastien

[thomaskilian]

You could work with replicas. However I always wonder how two people can work independently on the same thing. I can't imagine how something useful could grow out of such work. Maybe you should think of splitting/packaging you model in another way?