I just revised my first job as a developer. In my workplace we developing mainly in c# language.
In my work place there is a lot of use in source control and TFS which I'm not familiar with, my question: suppose I want to learn TFS in my spare time at house, is it possible? I don't have a pro account, I have visual studio 2017.
I don't mean to online courses, I need to do a "hands on" practice, i.e I need tfc on my own pc if it's possible.
You can download and run TFS Express or use Visual Studio Team Services free for up to 5 users.
Or, ask if your company has a place where you can "play" on the live TFS instance, but in a test environment - I have setup separate "Team Project Collections" for people to experiment on.
Related
Sounds like a very simple question. But What is the difference between TFS and Visual Studio Team System ?
I know TFS is version control and VSTS is collection of tools for developers, architects, testers.
But is TFS a part of VSTS ??
Also what is Visual Studio Team Services ? How are these products different from one another.
Please explain as these things can be sometimes very confusing.
Very short: VSTS is online version of TFS, main purpose: service control: TFVC and Git, but also includes Agile tools, continuous integration and so on.
See more detaled information in documentation.
Basically its local Server vs. Cloud. There are a lot of articles which can be found on the internet. eg. this one.
One major drawback is the reduced possibilities of customizing your development process, WITs and so on. Here is a list of things you can't in VSTS: Click
But is TFS a part of VSTS ??
No - its an online version of TFS.
If you have more questions, feel free to ask - but try to be more specific.
I am the sole .net developer for a small company. My projects span many .net technologies including WinForms, WPF, SQL, XNA, Linq, WCF, WTF?, and others.
I struggle staying on top of all these projects so I'm looking to make my life easier with the release of VS2010. Without a mentor I rely heavily on StackOverflow and whatever else Google comes up with. Should I convince my company to get an edition with an MSDN subscription? Is it one of those things where once you have it, you can't imagine life without it?
What about the source control that comes with VS2010, do you all find it better than an SVN server?
We're looking to hire another programmer this year, would I be best off getting a Team edition of VS2010 to be best prepared for that hire?
Thanks!
If you want "Intellitrace" (aka "historical debugging") you'll need Ultimate.
Similarly Premium and Professional incrementally have fewer features. Any other these, or some combination could be the deciding factor. There is a comparison on the product pages.
Also, consider the value of an MSDN Subscription, getting you access to OSs, servers and tools for development and test (and one instance of Office for general use).
Even as a sole developer you should still be using source control (unless it is VSS :-)), whether SVN, GIT, TFS, ... all the paid editions will give you integration. ALM (application lifecycle management) like TFS will do source code control (SCM or VCS) as well as work item tracking (defects, feastrues) and much more. VS paid editions + MSDN include TFS (and you can run it on a Workstation -- server OS only no longer).
In my opinion if you are being employed professionally as a developer in the MS platform, VS Pro + MSDN is a minimum (otherwise ask yourself about the standard of employment), and really it should be VS Ultimate + MSDN. Compare the cost of employing you with the cost of the subscription (especially once on a VL program -- and you only need a single MSDN subscription to qualify for VL).
Visual Studio is a great product and I use it daily. Our level of MSDN subscription is Premium. This opens most of the doors in the MSDN library and I can't say I'm missing Ultimate. When Visual Studio was still RC and Beta we were developing in it (Ultimate) and things like IntelliTrace were nice to have features but were definitely not make or break.
I would advise against getting Visual Studio Premium because it is lacking in some of the features that I use extensively such as Code Coverage and static code analysis.
I'd have to say I can't imagine life without an MSDN subscription. It would be impossible to develop (and test) on the range of platforms necessary.
As for the source repositories we have been using TFS 2010 for the last few months and found that the seamless integration with Visual Studio is the huge selling point. The ability to check-in and out is only one aspect of the system. The ability to create build definitions, view build history and manage work items, all through the IDE, saves so much time.
If price becomes a problem there are always alternatives to Microsoft. If you want to use SVN there are SVN plugins such as VisualSVN and ankhsvn. You could then use something like CruiseControl.Net for builds.
Working as a single developer or in a small team I've usually found that any version of VS (except for Express) is ok, the Ultimate version do have some interesting things, but not anything essential for many developers.
I'd suggest that you (or your boss) look at the Microsoft Action Pack. They've got a new one for developers where you'll get 3 VS Pro licenses plus a bunch of OS and Server licenses (some of them only for development but some of them are valid for any employee I think).
In England it seems to be about £290 per year with the 15% discount that's on right now, so very cheap for what you get. There are some requirements, but if you develop software using MS Software you probably have a fairly high chance of qualifying:
https://partner.microsoft.com/40132997
Ok, I know this isnt a programming question, but I think its really important to understand the differences to be a more productive developer...so please don't close this question!! And yes, I do feel stupid for asking this question! Have only ever worked with the Prof edition of VS 2005/2008.
Now that we have a team of 6 people, I would like to what benefits Team System would offer us over 6 licenses of VS Professional? Also, what advantages does Team Foundation Server offer?
TFS can be good if you use work items and are interested in associating source changes with these work items. Otherwise, using it for a couple of weeks at a customer (that was not using work items) just made me want to run back to subversion.
Merging UI is not very good (to be polite), the VS plug-in always wants to contact the TFS server to check for any changes of the files you're using, there are false warnings of conflicts...
Note that I am the guy that usually defends Microsoft against the Java/PHP guys, so it is very strange for me to write this...
TFS is a great source control tool for every organization. And is much advance than Visual Source Safe. It also has work item management (for tasks) simmilar to Rational software. We are using it for years and not just for .Net languages.
With the Team System version you already have a Team Explorer wherein your users can access the source control. Also Team System consists of different sub products that targets specific job functions such as Team System for Development Edition (For developers), Team System Database Edition (For database architect), Team System Architect Edition (For System Architect), and Team System Test Edition (For testers). All those subversions are included on the Team Suite edition.
For the Professional version it could also benefit to the TFS source control system if the machine is installed with Team Explorer.
The major difference between Professional & Team System is Team Foundation Server. Team Foundation Server is the massive overhaul/replacement of Visual SourceSafe. But TFS also gives you other functionality such as work item tracking and other features to manage the complete development life cycle.
Hey, thanks to all for the answers so far! I have never worked in a team/collaborative environment before, so this is a tad bit new to me. We are in the midst of acquiring a "Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium subscription". I know that this package gets updated to "Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN" on March 22 2010.
Will I still be able to leverage collaborative efforts using this package? Is it worth the $2970 additional cost?
EDIT: We are applying for the Empower for ISVs subscription. We work mainly on SaaS/RIA solutions. Am I understanding the term "Work Item" correctly - that is if I wish to task Developer 1 with say XHTML/CSS, Developer 2 with a certain functional module, and Developer 3 with another functional module - each of these is considered a work item that can be easily tracked with VSTS?
Team system, even without team foundation server has code analysis capabilities and metrics for your code that actually quantifies how maintainable it is. For a project manager this is nirvana when trying to find out who does a great job on their code and for a developer it gives him hard facts about where to improve his code.
That being said I think Team Foundation Server might be overkill for a team of 6 people except if you are building an extremely large system.
If you are comfortable with Subversion or a different version control manager,
you are dont mind using Nunit (or alternative unit test tool) and you are
familiar with or can find the open source (or fee based) code metric tools,
and you have bug tracker in place you can save quite a bit of money on the licensing.
I have worked a lot with Team System, and at some clients, just the Pro Version.
While some of the integration TS offers is slick, I am so used to nUnit and
Subversion that I actually miss them at times when working in TS.
Now in 2010, the Ultimate edition does offer some great UML diagramming and code analysis
tools that I will miss in lower versions.
Already have MSDN with Team System Test Edition, how do I go about getting Developer Edition? Can't find it on MSDN.
Do I need to buy a whole other MSDN license for this?
Can you add just another SKU into the Team System family, in other words, can you have 2 Team System Versions, or does it have to be the Team $uite MegaVersion or single versions?
Also, can you use FxCop with the nice VS shell integration inside of VS Test Edition?
Any URLs/hints would be greatly appreciated. Seems to me that there's very little documentation on how to mix and match VS versions. Would be great if MSFT had a "Visual Studio store" MENU ITEM in VS where you could go and just buy/download the different SKUs automatically. I mean it takes me just a few clicks to download extra states into TurboTax, but MSFT makes that very hard to do.
P.S. Same set of questions for Visual Studio Database Edition.....yes I'm a dev that wears many hats.
There are 3 common levels of licensing that you see:
Visual Studio Pro - Doesn't include any of the team system features
Visual Studio Team System xxxxx Edition - Where xxxx is either Developer, Tester, Architect or DBPro. Includes all the functionality of VS Pro + the functionality associated with the role you chose.
Visual Studio Team Suite - Includes the functionality of all the different role editions.
If you have the VSTS Developer Edition and you want some of the functionality from the other roles, you either have to buy a 2nd VSTS license for the other role, or upgrade to VSTS Team Suite. If I remember correctly VSTS Team Suite is about twice the cost of a specific role version of VSTS, so rather than purchasing multiple role editions most people just opt to upgrade to Team Suite since the cost is approx. the same.
You can compare the list prices here: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/howtobuy/compare-price.mspx
First, once you logon to the MSDN site, make sure you've clicked the "Downloads" tab at the top of the page, and then near the lower-right click on "MSDN Subscriber Downloads". Software that you have access to at your level of subscription will appear in the list.
Second, you may consider reviewing the details of your level of MSDN subscription if you still don't see what you're looking for.
I hope this helps!
If you will really be using all the different products, then it is best to have the full System license. I think 2 of the products make the price of the full, if you are using 3 ...
I am developing an Isolated Shell that caters to "designers/special content creators" performing specific tasks, using the Shell. As they operate on files, they need to be able to use TFS for source control. This is mainly due to the fact that Developers will also operate on the same files from TFS but using Visual studio 2008.
After looking and searching I still could not find Team Explorer to be available to Shell.
Asking on MSDN forums, lead me to the answer that "this is not supported yet in the Isolated Shell". Well, then the whole point of giving away a shell is not justified, if you want to use a source control system for your files. The idea is not to recreate everything and develop tool windows etc using the TFS provider API.
The Visual Studio Extensibility book by Keyven Nayyeri has an example, which only goes so far into this problem of adding a sc provider.
Has anyone worked on developing Visual Studio 2008 Isolated Shell applications/environment? Please provide comments, questions - anything that you have to share apart from the following threads, which I've already participated in.
Threads from MSDN forums:
Team Explorer for Isolated Shell
Is it possible to use Team Explorer in VS Shell Isolated?
Thanks for your answer. Yes you are right, we will acquire CALs for users without having to buy them Visual Studio, that's the direction we will be taking.
But I am yet to figure out how to make Team Explorer available to such users, inside Shell. So I am looking to find out the technical details of how that can be done.
I mean, I have a user, he installs my VS Shell application, he has no VStudio Team system on his machine. Now if I acquire CAL for TFS and install Team Explorer, do you think it will be automatically available in the VS Shell app?
Any ideas? have you worked on making this happen?
Thanks
It sounds like you are trying to allow the "special content creators" save files in TFS Source Control without having to buy them a license to a Visual Studio Team Edition -- correct me if I'm wrong.
If that's the case, unfortunately I believe that you can't quite do that. Your users still need a Client Access License ("CAL") to access TFS.
I think that you can acquire just CALs for your users without having to buy Visual Studio for them (I presume for less than a full blown Visual Studio would cost). At that point, you can just distribute to them the Team Explorer, which is a VS shell with nothing but TFS access components. That is available in your TFS server media.
I found this via Google. You might want to review it to decide your best options:
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Licensing White Paper
The only exception to the CAL rules I'm aware of is access to Work Items. Assuming properly licensed servers, anyone in your organization can create new Work Items or view and update existing ones created by them, using the Work Item Web Access component.
Just stumbled on this question, it might still be relevant to you.
You have the option of including the AnkhSVN (http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/) packages and load it into your Isolated Shell. While there are some issues around it, with Subversion support, you could use SvnBridge to access TFS repositories. This might bring you a little bit closer to the process you are trying to achieve.