It's clear that Visual SourceSafe was designed to work with Microsoft products alone. Also, there is no integration with other software configuration management tools, and Microsoft does not provide a comprehensive set of its own. Microsoft has made some attempts to shore up these gaps with third-party tools. Metrowerks has written a Macintosh version of Visual SourceSafe, and Unix support is available through Mainsoft. Still, if you weren't using files from a Microsoft development product, such a build utility would be useful.
Security is also minimal.
Only four security levels exist for access rights, and the system lacks promotion levels. Administrators cannot assign group rights, so everyone must be configured individually. On the plus side, the documentation contains some pleasant surprises. Visual SourceSafe's documentation, however, includes an overview section that poses the kinds of questions a first-time user might ask. The remainder of the User's Guide lapses into bare-bones procedures again, but the beginning of the book is quite an improvement.