TFVC vs. TF-Git – A Quick Survey

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately about whether it would make sense for our application development teams to make the move to Team Foundation Git (TF-Git) as the primary version control choice within TFS. We are still using TFS 2010 as our primary TFS instance today although we have several projects in Team Foundation Service (TFService) as part of a pilot.  As we make preparations to move to TFS 2013 (we have not yet decided if we’ll host TFS 2013 on premises or if we’ll make exclusive use of the TFService) we are putting some thought into whether or not we should make the leap to TF-Git.

There are plenty of pros and cons regardless of which option is chosen.  For example, TF-Git is very well suited for disconnected scenarios and also provides amazing support for branching and merging code.  On the other hand, TFVC provides the common “check out/check in” workflow that so many of us are used to today.  It also provides the ability to place exclusive locks on files that are notoriously difficult to merge such as XML files (e.g. workflow, SSIS packages, etc.).

While it’s easy enough for me to solicit the opinions of my co-workers, I’d also like to get your opinions.  To make this as easy as it can be, I’ve created a simple survey with six questions (see screenshot below).

So, please take a moment and take the survey.
 

We will keep the survey open for about two weeks.  Once the results have been collected, I will share them on this blog.

UPDATE: The final survey results have been posted here.

TFS 2013 Power Tools Released

As of today, you can download the just-released Team Foundation Server 2013 Power Tools (compatible with TFS 2013 RC). If you’re not familiar with the TFS Power Tools, and you spend any amount of time working with TFS on a day-to-day basis, I highly recommend you check these out.
This release is comprised of four separate downloads:

• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 Power Tools - this is a collection of multiple tools, including:
• Best Practices Analyzer (TFS application tier only)
• Check-in Policies
• Process Template Editor
• Storyboard Shapes
• Team Explorer Enhancements
• Team Foundation Power Tool Command Line (tfpt.exe)
• Test Attachment Cleaner
• Windows PowerShell Cmdlets
• Windows Shell Extensions
• Work Item Templates
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 Build Extensions - the Team Foundation Build Extensions provide the ability to execute Ant or Maven 2 builds from Team Foundation Server 2013 and publish the results of the build along with any associated JUnit test results back to Team Foundation Server.
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 MSSCCI Provider 32-bit - enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that do not support Team Explorer integration. Refer to the above link for more information about what products can make use of this provider.
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 MSSCCI Provider 64-bit - this version of the MSSCCI Provider is for 64-bit products using MSSCCI such as the 64-bit version of MatLab. The majority of applications using a MSSCCI provider typically require the 32-bit version

Navigate to the above links to get more details on each of the available tools.

TFS Build Manager for VS 2013 Updated

Today, the Community TFS Build Extensions on CodePlex released an update to the Community TFS Build Manager VS2013 add-in. If you spend any time at all managing multiple build definitions, build results, and/or build servers, then you need to give this add-in a try.
Updates & fixes include:

• NEW - Search and replace workspace mappings
• NEW - Filter Build Definitions via text
• NEW - Access build logs in web access
• NEW - Build Duration and Agent Name columns
• NEW - Friendly Trigger Names
• NEW - Easily queue high priority builds
• NEW - Clone to Project
  

• FIX - Case insensitive comparisons when changing drop location of existing builds
• FIX - Invalid Project Reference issue
• FIX - Only change & save the new process template only if it's a different one
• FIX - UI typo in Change Drop Location screen

The current feature set include:

• View and sort Builds and Build Definitions across multiple Build Controllers and Team Projects
• Bulk operations on Build Definitions
  • Change Build Templates
  • Queue
  • Enable
  • Disable
  • Delete
  • Edit
  • Set Retention Policies
  • Change Drop Location 
  • Change Build Controller
  • Change Build Triggers
• Clone Build Definitions (includes workspace mapping translation)
• Create a DGML image of your Builds and Controllers
• Bulk operations on Builds
  • Delete
  • Set Build Quality
  • Open Drop Folders
  • Retain Indefinitely
  • Stop/Cancel

A standalone Windows Application is also available as part of the Community TFS Build Extensions CodePlex project.
Download the Community TFS Build Manager for Visual Studio 2013 here.

TFS Agile Poker for Windows 8

If you have been involved with agile software development in any form or fashion, chances are you’ve spent some time estimating effort or relative size of user stories.  This is often done by selecting a card from a special planning poker deck.  A typical planning poker deck is based on a Fibonacci sequence (e.g. 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…) though the sequence is sometimes modified after 13 for even numbers (e.g. 20, 40, 100).  This process works fairly well when all participants are located relatively close to each other (i.e. in the same room).  What if the team members are geographically separated?
It just so happens that a fellow Visual Studio ALM MVP, Mike Douglas, has recently released TFS Agile Poker for Windows 8 that works with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (or Team Foundation Service).

TFS Agile Poker is a free cross-platform tool for distributed and co-located teams to point (i.e. estimate) your Team Foundation Server backlog. TFS Agile Poker can be used with Team Foundation Service or or your on-premises Team Foundation Server 2010 or 2012 installation using theTFS OData Services.

Microsoft’s Brian Keller selected TFS Agile Poker as his pick of the week in This Week On Channel 9 (starting at 14:14 in the video).
The app is free and is currently available for Windows 8 with plans for Windows Phone, Web/HTML5, Android, and iOS.  Read more about this app here.

Demystifying Microsoft’s Git Offering

Although Microsoft is definitely late to the distributed version control (DVC) game, they’re pretty much in the game now and their DVC offering is only getting better. In order to provide distributed capabilities within its current version control offering, Team Foundation Server, the Visual Studio team had to make a decision: build something brand new (possibly proprietary) or build on one of the standard DVC platforms. They decided to go with the latter and build upon Git. A great decision as far as I am concerned.

But, Before That…

Before we get to the Visual Studio offering, let’s take a look at CodePlex. If you’re not familiar with CodePlex, it is Microsoft’s free open source project hosting site. Here, you can create projects to share with others around the world as well as download open source software. In March, 2012, Microsoft made available the capability to create Git-based repositories within CodePlex.  With this, developers now have the capability of choosing between a centralized version control repository, a la TFS, or a distributed version control repository via Git (or Mercurial, which actually came before Git but isn’t nearly as popular).

Moving Forward

Fast forward about ten months and Microsoft announces Git support for Team Foundation Service (TFService, their hosted TFS offering). This update provides a 100% compatible Git repository option for TFService. Not only does this provide typical Visual Studio developers with a great DVC option for TFService it also makes the TFService option much more attractive for non-Visual Studio developers by providing simpler integration for tools such as Xcode.

Along with Git in TFService, Microsoft also provided the Visual Studio Tools for Git. This extension provides Git integration within Visual Studio 2012. If you plan to utilize Git-based repositories within Visual Studio 2012 then you will need to install this extension. Something to note is that this extension allows Visual Studio to work with any standard Git repository such as GitHub, not just TFService.

Still Some Confusion

One of the biggest Git-/Visual Studio-related questions I get today is, what is the difference between the Visual Studio Tools for Git and Git-tf?

The Git-tf command line tools were announced in August, 2012 with the intent of giving developers the capability of using a local Git repository for development that could then be synced up with a TFS repository. In simple terms, you can use Git-tf to clone TFS into a local repository which could then sync your local commits back into TFS. Essentially, it provided a bridge between TFS and clients and/or developers that preferred to work with (or could only work with) Git. Until now, this was essentially your only option for using TFS with tools such as Xcode.

Visual Studio Tools for Git is a Visual Studio Extension (not a set of command line tools) that provides a set of context menus exposing typical Git operations such as Clone, Push, Pull, and Fetch. If you prefer to work within the Visual Studio IDE (as opposed to the command line) then you definitely want to install this extension.

Cheat Sheet

The graphic below depicts the tools you can use to access TFVC as well as TF-Git repositories from various clients.  There are two items to note with this image:

1. As announced by Brian Harry, Git will be supported in the on-premises version of TFS 2013 starting with the preview version to be released at this years //Build/ conference.
2. Although TF-Git repositories are depicted, you can substitute any standard Git repository (e.g. GitHub).

TFS Live app for Windows Phone

If you happen to 1) work with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Service (TFService) or another publically accessible TFS server and 2) own a Windows 8 Phone, then you will want to check out the tfs live app for Windows Phone. The tfs live app provides quick, at-a-glance totals for the various types of work items you’re most interested in.

When you install the app and run it for the first time, you will have to configure the app to connect to your TFS server:

Although a template has been provided for the server URL (as shown in the above image), it is not the best template to follow if you’re connecting to a TFService instance.  In this case, use the following template:

     https://{account}.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection – replacing {account} with your specific TFService account name.

Once you have successfully logged on, you will need to select a project name, role, and a couple of other options:

The selected role determines which queries will show up on the main screen. The roles that can be selected from include:

• Developer – provides: “bugs assigned to me” and “tasks assigned to me”
• Tester – provides: “bugs assigned to me”, “test cases assigned to me”, and “tasks assigned to me”
• Dev Lead – “bugs assigned to me”, “tasks assigned to me”, and “overall bug summary”
• Test Lead – “bugs assigned to me”, “tasks assigned to me”, “overall bug summary”, and “overall test summary”
• Manager – “overall task summary”, “overall bug summary”, and “overall test summary”

The image below shows the screen for a Developer role:

Tapping on any of the query icons (on the screen above) will open a custom query (based on the specific type of query being ran) in the web browser displaying the appropriate work items.  This experience is less than ideal but it does work.  I would really like to see the query results come back to the phone and displayed in a list that, when tapped, would then open the web-based query to view the full details.

That said, I still find this app highly useful for keeping up to date on newly assigned and/or modified work items.  Some suggestions I might offer to the app developer would include:

• Modify the server URL template to be more TFService friendly (as I’ve shown above).
• Display the project name (and possibly role) on the main screen.  Currently, you can’t tell which project you’re connected to when looking at the main screen.
• When selecting role from the settings page, “Devloper” (notice the missing ‘e’) is spelled incorrectly.  Not a major issue but detracts from the overall fit-n-finish of the app.

A PowerPoint slide deck with further details is available from the author here.

Team Foundation Sidekicks for TFS 2012

If you make use of Team Foundation Server and you don’t have Attrice’s Team Foundation Sidekicks in your toolbox, you should!  I have been using the Team Foundation Sidekicks for years now and would hate to be without them.  As of today, Attrice has made available a new version compatible with Team Foundation Server 2012 – both the on premises version as well as the Team Foundation Service (i.e. Microsoft’s cloud offering for TFS).

From their blog:

This release functionality is mainly identical to the version of Sidekicks for Visual Studio 2010, with support of TFS both on premise and in-the-cloud (Team Foundation Service).

For 2012 we support both stand-alone client application and Visual Studio integration package; the latter uses VS 2012 extension registration mechanism and is available through VS Extensions Manager. Note that there are separate installations for stand-alone app and VS package.

A quick review of the individual “sidekicks” included are:

• Permissions Sidekick
• Code Review Sidekick
• Shelveset Sidekick
• Labels Sidekick
• History Sidekick
• Status Sidekick
• Workspace Sidekick

You can view all the details and get the latest version here.

Visual Studio 2012 / TFS 2012 Links

If you’ve been following the progress of Visual Studio 2012 closely chances are you’ve already downloaded the recently released Release Candidate.  If not, then I’ve provided a handy list of links below to get you started.  I’ve also included some handy reference and guidance links as well.

Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate

• Visual Studio 2012 RC downloads home page
• Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Premium 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Professional 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Test Professional 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Express 2012 RC for Web
• Visual Studio Express 2012 RC for Windows 8
• IntelliTrace Collector for Visual Studio 2012 RC
• Agents for Visual Studio 2012 RC
• Feedback Client for TFS RC 
• Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2012 RC 
• Visual Studio 2012 RC Shell
• Visual Studio 2012 RC SDK
• Visual Studio 2012 RC Language Pack

.NET Framework

• .NET 4.5 RC

Team Foundation Server 2012

• Team Foundation Server 2012 RC
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012 RC
• Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2012 RC
• Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2012 RC Language Pack
• Team Explorer Everywhere for TFS RC

Team Foundation Service

This is not a download but I’m including it anyway since it’s another offering in the works by Microsoft related to TFS.  If you are not familiar with the Team Foundation Service it is essentially “TFS in the Cloud” (in simplistic terms – you can read more about it here).  To sign up for a free preview account, visit the TFS Preview site.

Support

Getting Help - To help with any questions you might have, please refer to the following:

• MSDN Forums - get answers to your questions from the community

Providing Feedback - To provide feedback (bugs, suggestions, etc.) for any of the Visual Studio 2012 RC products, utilize the corresponding Microsoft Connect site:

• Visual Studio
• LightSwitch
• Blend

Reference & Guidance

• Visual Studio 2012 RC Documentation - includes walkthroughs, samples, training kits, etc.
• Visual Studio 2012 ALM Rangers Guidance – includes a large variety of guidance developed by the Visual Studio ALM Rangers.  The following diagram depicts the type of guidance being provided:
  
  

Team Foundation Service Whitepaper in Beta

The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have shipped another deliverable as part of the ALM Rangers Visual Studio 11 Readiness “Gig” Project – the Team Foundation Service Preview whitepaper.

If you have been following the various developments of Visual Studio 11 and Team Foundation Server 11 then you are already aware that Microsoft now offers a cloud-based solution for TFS – currently referred to as the Team Foundation Service Preview.  Many of the features that are currently available in the “on-premises” version of TFS are also available in the cloud-based version (conversely, there are also some features in the cloud-based version that do not exist in the on-premises version).  Rather than getting into the details of what’s included in the Team Foundation Service, I recommend checking out the newly release Team Foundation Service whitepaper (click here then click on the “ALM Rangers – Visual Studio Team Foundation Service.pdf” link).

The current table of contents include the following topics:

• The Dogfooding Environment at a Glance
• The good, the bad, and the ugly as experienced by ALM Rangers
  • Context
  • What is the ease of acquisition and deployment of Team Foundation Service?
  • How is a distributed work model with multiple companies or remote workers enabled?
  • How is "work from anywhere" enabled?
  • How are ongoing improvements delivered to Team Foundation Service?
  • How does Team Foundation Service handle Identity Management?
  • How should administration of Team Foundation Service be handled in the Enterprise?
  • Why should Team Foundation Service be positioned as a "Centralized Service Delivery" in the Enterprise?
  • When should you choose between Team Foundation Service and On-Premise Deployment of Team
  • Foundation Server?
• References

If you have questions about the Team Foundation Service then this document proves to be a great source of information.

For more information, refer to this post on the Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server Blog.

TFS 11 Power Tools Beta Released

A beta release of the TFS 11 Power Tools has been released.  This release can run side-by-side with the TFS 2010 Power Tools (with some caveats – see below).

The features included with this release are:

TFS 11 Power Tools

• Team Foundation Power Tool Command Line (tfpt.exe)
• Team Explorer Enhancements
• Windows Shell Extensions (*note: depending on which versions of the TFS Power Tools you install (e.g. TFS 2010 or TFS 11 Beta) the last one installed wins – i.e. you can’t have Windows Shell Extensions for both versions)
• Process Template Editor
• Test Attachment Cleaner
• Best Practices Analyzer
• TFS PowerShell Commands

Build Extensions – provides the ability to execute Ant or Maven 2 builds from Team Foundation Server 11 Beta and publish the results of the build along with any associated JUnit test results back to Team Foundation Server.

MSSCCI (32-bit) & MSSCCI (64-bit) - enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that do not support Team Explorer integration.

There are a few known issues which Brian Harry has documented in this blog post.

Team Explorer Everywhere (and more) Now Free!

Visual Studio 2010 Team Explorer Everywhere is Microsoft’s Team Explorer client for Eclipse-based environments.  Here is the official description:

Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 helps .NET and Java development teams collaborate across platforms. It provides the tools and plug-ins you need to access Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 from within Eclipse-based environments, so everyone can work together to achieve business goals.

Up until yesterday, Team Explorer Everywhere was sold as a separate product.  It is now available as a free download.  Keep in mind that although Team Explorer Everywhere is now free, you will still need a Team Foundation Server CAL.  See Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN Licensing for details.

There has also been some changes to how TFS Reporting and accessing TFS from within Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is licensed (i.e. now free).

Check out Brian Harry’s blog for the official announcement and more details.

Windows 8 Beta and Visual Studio 11 Beta Quick Links

If you haven't yet downloaded the Windows 8 Beta or Visual Studio 11 Beta, a list of links are provided below for convenience.  If there is anything missing (from the February 29th beta wave release), please leave a comment below and we'll get it added to the list.

Windows 8

• Windows 8 Consumer Preview
• Windows 8 Server Beta - must register to download

Visual Studio 11 Beta

Download - this link works for the following product downloads:

.NET

• .NET Framework 4.5 Beta

Visual Studio

• Visual Studio 11 Ultimate Beta
• Visual Studio 11 Premium Beta
• Visual Studio 11 Professional Beta
• Visual Studio 11 Test Professional Beta
• Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Web
• Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Windows 8
• IntelliTrace Collector for Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Agents for Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Feedback Client for Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Remote Tools for Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Visual Studio 11 Beta Shell
• Visual Studio 11 Beta SDK

Team Foundation Server

• Team Foundation Server Beta
• Team Foundation Server Express Beta
• Team Explorer Beta
• Team Explorer Everywhere Beta

Getting Help - To help with any questions you might have, please refer to the following:

• Visual Studio 11 Beta Forums - get answers to your questions from the community
• Visual Studio 11 Beta Documentation - includes walkthroughs, samples, training kits, etc.

Providing Feedback - To provide feedback (bugs, suggestions, etc.) for any of the Visual Studio 11 Beta products, utilize the corresponding Connect site:

• Visual Studio
• LightSwitch
• Blend

Visual Studio/TFS 11 Beta Coming Next Week

It has been roughly five months since Microsoft released a Developer Preview version of Visual Studio 11 along with the Developer Preview of Windows 8.  Today, Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing the beta version of Visual Studio 11, as well as the .NET Framework 4.5, next week on February 29th (the same day the Windows 8 Consumer Preview – a.k.a. beta is to be released).

Some of the quick highlights include:

• TFS Express.  With the release of TFS 11, there will be a new “TFS Express” SKU that will be free for 1 to 5 users.  TFS Express has some limitations (e.g. no SharePoint or SQL Server Reporting Services integration) but getting the features of TFS for FREE is a huge win for small teams.
  
  
• Visual Studio Express & TFS – going along with the above announcement, the Visual Studio 11 Express SKU will be updated to include support for TFS (i.e. the Team Explorer client can be utilized from within Visual Studio 11 Express).  Another huge win for small teams.
  
  
• A more “Metro-fied” Visual Studio IDE – although I am not sure Microsoft would officially call the new Visual Studio 11 IDE a “Metro” application, you can definitely see the similarities between the two.  For example, the colors within the IDE (with the exception of the code/text editor) have been modified to a more monochromatic set of (light or dark) themes (the colors can still be modified based on your personal taste).  The various icons have also been replaced with “glyphs” – basically “flattened” versions of icons that have a very Metro feel to them.  Microsoft has also spent a lot of effort reducing less-used toolbar items as well as simplifying the lines used within the various dialogs.  Overall, the new IDE looks quite a bit different and I’m not sure yet if I will like it or not.  However, I am anxious to find out.  Here is an example screenshot using the light theme:
  
  
  
  
• Go Live License – the beta release includes a Go Live license allowing you to use the beta tools within a production environment, if desired.

The above highlights don’t even begin to scratch the surface of what’s included in Visual Studio 11/TFS 11.  Expect a lot more information regarding the beta release to become available over the coming weeks.  For now, you can view the following posts for more details:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/archive/2012/02/23/sneak-preview-of-visual-studio-11-and-net-framework-4-5-beta.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2012/02/23/the-road-to-visual-studio-11-beta-and-net-4-5-beta.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/02/23/introducing-the-new-developer-experience.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/02/23/coming-soon-tfs-express.aspx

Even More of Getting Started with the TFS 2010 Object Model

Back in October, I presented on Getting Started with the TFS Object Model (as well as a look at what’s coming in Visual Studio 11) at the Tulsa TechFest.  I had intended to post the source code for the demos I ran through during my talk but I never got around to it and it completely slipped my mind.  A few days ago, I was gently reminded by one of the attendees (thanks Sean!) that I had not posted the source code so, here I am!

Below is a screen shot of the main window displayed by the demos.  This application has 10 basic types of functionality that can be demonstrated.  The first two are demonstrated by clicking on the ellipses buttons in the upper right of the window which will display a dialog allowing you to select a TFS Server/TPC and Team Project.

The remaining eight features are demonstrated by clicking on the remaining buttons, which include:

• Get Version – demonstrates the ability to determine which version of TFS you’re communicating with – assuming you’re running on a client that has the TFS 2010 Team Explorer Client installed on it.
• Get TPCs – lists all TPCs associated with the selected TFS server.
• Get Team Projects – lists all Team Projects associated with the selected TPC.
• Get Latest Build Info – displays a list of basic build information for all builds associated with the selected Team Project (an example of this is shown in the screenshot below).
• Queue Build – queues a new build using the specified Build Name.
• Get Work Item Count – displays the number of work items returned based on the WIQL query defined within the source code.
• Create Work Item – creates a new, basic work item (in this case, a “Bug”).
• Get Latest – demonstrates the ability to “Get Latest” source code from TFS.

If you’re curious about the source code, you can download it from here.

Team Foundation Service Preview Code

One of the many new features in Visual Studio/TFS 11 that I demonstrated today at Tulsa TechFest included the new Team Foundation Service (a.k.a. TFS for Azure).  This is the new cloud-based Team Foundation Server service provided by Microsoft (currently in a developer preview/non-beta state).  You can read more about the new TF Service on Brian Harry’s blog here.

Microsoft has made the TF Service available for use on a limited basis - e.g. they handed out invitation codes at the //Build/ conference several weeks ago and have blogged a few invitation codes.  The down side is that each code has a limited number of activations so unless you were quick to sign up you may have missed out on the chance to check out the preview.

To help at least a few people out (25 to be exact), Microsoft has provided me with an activation code (see below) to publish during today’s “What’s New in Visual Studio 11” session.  For those of you attending this session at this year’s Tulsa TechFest, you are seeing me publish this post live, which means you will have first dibs on making use of the invitation code.  For everyone else, it’s all first-come, first-serve.  The first 25 activations win!

The Specifics…

This invitation code is your opportunity to claim your own Visual Studio Team Foundation Service Preview account!

This account is for you to experience the Team Foundation Service Preview before it is publicly available. You can use this account to manage your software development projects and to store your source code, work items and bugs in Team Foundation Server hosted on the Windows Azure platform. You can also invite friends, colleagues and team members to join your account to collaborate on your projects.

Your invitation code is: tulsatf

To claim your account please visit http://tfspreview.com register with your Windows LiveID and enter your invitation code to claim your free account.

Please note that there are a limited number of these complimentary accounts and they will be assigned on a first come, first served basis. Register today to secure your account!

* Invitation must be redeemed by: 10/06/2012

* Please note that once the Team Foundation Service reaches commercial availability, if you want to continue your service, you may be required to start paying for this account or it will expire at the end of the trial period.

Getting Up and Running with the TFS 2010 Object Model

I recently wrote a post for the MVP Award Program blog titled “Getting Up and Running with the TFS 2010 Object Model”.  If you are looking for some basic information on how to start writing your first Team Foundation Server utility then please check it out.  If you have any questions and/or regarding the post please let me know.

Version Control Changes Coming to TFS v.Next

For many of using Team Foundation Server on a daily basis, living with the TFS workspace has been a love/hate (mostly hate?) relationship.  A simplistic definition, if you’re not familiar with TFS’ workspace, is that it is a mapping of a selection of files within TFS version control to their corresponding destination on your local file system along with various related status information.  This workspace mapping is stored on the server – not the client (i.e. server workspace).

The down side is that it is relatively easy to get your local file system out of sync with what TFS thinks it knows (about the status of the mapped files).  If you delete a file on your local file system, TFS has no idea that the file has been deleted.  If you modify a file on your local file system (assuming you remove the “read only” attribute) then TFS has no idea about that change.  These examples, along with others not listed, adds to some of the greatest confusion when learning to use TFS version control for the first time.

On the up-side, the beauty of the server workspace is that TFS will send down only the files necessary based upon your request (i.e. “Get Latest”).  This can be very useful if you’re working across a WAN/VPN connection where bandwidth is at a premium.

Enough about the current state of affairs.  Now, the good part… Brian Harry has posted some details around some of the enhancements being made to version control with the next release of Team Foundation Server (a.k.a. “Dev11”).  In this post, he discusses the addition of the “Local Workspace” which allows you to make changes directly to the files within your file system and TFS will automagically recognize and handle those changes.  This will provide SVN-style version control capabilities with TFS.  Server workspaces will still exist but the local workspace will become the default.

Check out Brian’s post for all the nitty gritty details.

Visual Studio/TFS 2010 Videos

If you’re looking for a great collection of videos for Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010, look no further than this post on the Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server blog.

The list of videos span the following categories:

• Testing
• Development
• Visualization, Modeling, and Architecture
• Team Foundation Server
• Lab Management

Lots of great content for viewing.

OTSUG – What is Visual Studio ALM?

Please join us on Tuesday, March 22nd as Mike Douglas presents on “What is Visual Studio ALM?”  If you are not familiar with the various ALM features in Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010, this will be a great opportunity to see these features demonstrated.  You will also have the chance to ask any questions that you may have regarding the Visual Studio ALM tools.

Visit the Omaha Team System User Group web site for complete meeting details.

We hope to see you there!

TFS Project Server Integration Feature Pack

The TFS Project Server Integration Feature Pack has been in beta for a few months now.  As of today, it is being released into the wild and is now ready for download from the MSDN Subscribers site.

As seen on Brian Harry’s blog post, the TFS Project Server Integration Feature Pack enables teams to work together more effectively by:

• Providing up to date insight into portfolio execution, alignment with strategic objectives, and resource utilization of software development projects by leveraging the quantitative data stored in different systems.
• Automating the exchange and sharing of project information across teams and improving coordination between teams using disparate methodologies, like waterfall and agile, via common data and agreed upon metrics.
• Enabling development and project management teams to use familiar tools to collaborate and communicate project timeline and progress such as Microsoft Visual Studio, Project, and SharePoint.

More Information

You can find more information regarding this release via these links:

• Brian Harry’s Post (where the above summary came from)
• Portfolio Management: TFS <-> Project Server Integration in Beta (to get a better idea about what it does)
• TFS and Project Server integration forum (in case you have any questions)

Download Links

• As of today, you can download the TFS Project Server Integration Pack from the MSDN Subscribers site.