VS Code Mac OSX with TFS - macos

I have installed VS Code to Mac OSX. I would like to connect to my companies TFS server , so I could work on the project from mac as well .
The company is not using Visual Studio Team Services (was VS Online), still using TFS on company servers.
I see that there are ways to connect to Team Services with git settings, but how can I cannot to TFS from Mac VS Code ?

VS Code currently only supports Git, so your company's TFS must be hosting a Git Repostory for that to work. You can access TFVC using Team Explorer Everywhere and/or the cross platform commandline tools. If you want something close to integration with VS Code, consider git-tf(s), which will create a local git repository which you can push to TFS.

Related

Why is latest Xamarin needed on local TFS server for CI?

The requirements on the following page state that you need to install Visual Studio with Xamarin on your local TFS server to setup Xamarin CI builds:
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/ci/intro_to_ci/
topography of the CI
This is a real pain. We have lots of developers that rely on our local TFS server, most of whom don't do any Xamarin development. As such, any changes are heavily scrutinized. This often leads to us not installing the latest VS/Xamarin releases, as it's considered too risky for this vital bit of infrastructure.
We could have a Windows build machine with VS and Xamarin installed, that is connected to a Mac build machine. We'd be free to update the Windows and Mac build machines regularly, without the fear of compromising the TFS server. Is this possible? If not, why not?
Thanks in advance.
That diagram can't be right. There is no reason why you'd need VS or Xamarin installed on your TFS app tier.
I think it's showing a simplified configuration where the Windows build agent is installed alongside the app tier. That is a supported setup but is never, ever recommended by anyone, for exactly the reasons why you don't want to do it.
The diagram is simplified. You don't need to install anything on your TFS server. What you do instead is to install a Build Agent on a separate machine or virtual machine.
The installation details for the TFS 2017 / VSTS build agent v2 can be found in the official visual studio documentation.
The procedure is similar for both TFS and VSTS, where you generate an access token in TFS/VSTS, then simply enter the url for the TFS/VSTS instance when running the build agent install script, along with the access token.
There are build agents for Windows, Linux and macOS, so it is up to you how you configure how iOS builds are made.

Can Visual Studio Code on a Mac connect to a TFS2015 server?

I have a folder structure that is full of markdown files and images that I would like to maintain in TFS2015 (possibly using a GIT repo).
I would like this folder structure to be accessible both from some Mac computers running Visual Studio Code, and from some Windows development machines (ideally from existing installations of Visual Studio 2013, if possible, else with new installations of VSCode for Windows)
When anyone checks in anything, I want to deploy the latest and greatest content (both markdown files and images) to a web folder.
Can all the above be done?
As a note, I have all this implemented today as a VS2013 web project which connects to TFS2015 and uses a custom build to deploy on the web server. This is working, but unfortunately it cannot be accessed from OS X machines using VSCode, hence the question.
Yes the above can be achieved. VS Code on OS X or any tool on any OS is agnostic to the host system for the remote Git repo.
The git client being used by VS Code only cares about is the path (URL in case of TFS 2015) and the authentication/authorization mechanism to the remote git repo.

Visual Studio Online, Github, Jira, Octopus Deploy

We are looking at using Visual Studio online in an environment with multiple development partners that support a myriad number of systems. Across these partners, each one of them uses their own source control however we are looking at a model that commits code into a repository managed by us.
As part of this, we are looking to support partners that use toolsets such as Github, Jira, Bamboo, TeamCity, Octopus Deploy, etc
Does Visual Studio Online natively integrate with all of these?
When using Visual Studio Online, do accounts need to be setup with each of these services e.g Github?
Will Visual Studio Online support all IDEs e.g. Eclipse, Xcode, etc?
What other considerations do we need to consider e.g. latency, local copies (should connectivity be lost), etc?
If upgrading from Team Foundation Server 2010 to Visual Studio Online, what other considerations do we have to take onboard?
For the purposes of continuous integration & deployment, does Visual Studio Online support this natively?
If there is no native support for Jira for example, are there similar native features available with Visual Studio Online?
If you want integration with GitHub, then the first requirement would be to use Git as your VCS. This also requires you to use Team Foundation Server 2013 (or later) if you want to host it yourself, as earlier versions don’t support Git.
Once you use Git, you can indeed access the repository from VSO with other clients, as it provides a normal Git interface which all Git tooling options can talk to. And you also get the benefits of Git as a DVCS, so you can use it completely offline.
If you want to user other online services (e.g. GitHub), then of course you do need accounts for those services. VSO is something separate on its own.
As for features of VSO, you need to know that it’s technically a Team Foundation Server, so it comes with a range of included tools. For example an issue management, a build server with continuous integration, a team chat room, etc. So you may not need other services.
Visual Studio Online (now Visual Studio Team Services) supports Eclipse, IntelliJ, your favorite Java IDE, Xcode, Visual Studio, or any editor/IDE you like.

How to Deploy On-Premises with Visual Studio Online Continuous Delivery

My team uses Visual Studio Online ("VSO") to manage our ALM.
We already have a push-button build-process in place to build code from our local Git repo (remotely) and deploy it to a Microsoft Azure Website on Azure.
In addition to this we want a local, development-testing environment built and deployed with a push of a button.
What is the best way to integrate an automated, on-premises development-testing deployment into our development pipeline from within VSO's ALM ecosystem?
[We do also own TFS 2012 -- is there a way to leverage it from VSO to drive an on-premises build deployment from our VSO git repo?]
To deploy builds on-premise, I installed an on-premise build server and used it as the default build controller in my build definition.
When installing the build server select your Visual Studio Online url to point the build server to your team project collection.
I used the instructions here
http://myalmblog.com/2014/04/configuring-on-premises-build-server-for-visual-studio-online/
(normal issues when installing a build server remember to copy over your MSbuild folder from a machine with Visual Studio already installed etc...)
I know it's been a while since the question was asked, but this guy did it with an extension to be added to your VSTS account to deploy directly to an on-premise IIS. I'm going to check this solution today but I'm pretty sure it will work.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/monub/2016/01/20/visual-studio-team-services-release-management-iis-web-deployment-vnext/
UPDATE
Better yet, MSDN released a complete doc for deploying an asp.net app on IIS
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/release/examples/other-servers/net-to-vm

So Visual Studio officially supports Git now. What does that mean?

I just read an extremely interesting article that apparently as of this past Visual Studio 2012 update, it now has official Git support built in.
My question is, what does that mean exactly? Does this mean that TFS servers can now host Git repositories? Or, does Visual Studio use something like git-tfs behind the scenes to use regular TFS repositories with a Git bridge? Or does this apply to TFS servers at all? Also is using Git outside of Visual Studio which is hosted on TFS plain ol' vanilla git, or is it like the git-tfs bridge?
Also, is there any documentation yet about converting a TFS repository to a Git repository with this support?
Visual Studio Online hosts git repositories and provide integration to TFS work item tracking and builds. We store this information in a proper git repository - it's not a transparent git-tf bridge. Instead, we store git references and objects, although we store them in a SQL Server (SQL Azure) instead of a traditional on-disk git repository format. We do this to integrate with the existing TFS manageability and Team Foundation Service scaling.
Team Foundation Server, the on-premises product that resides in your data center, from TFS 2013 supports git repository hosting. Many features arrive on the hosted Visual Studio Online before arriving in the on-premises product.
Similarly, the Visual Studio integration is a proper git client - again, it's not git-tf. It uses the libgit2 and libgit2sharp projects to provide repository access to a local git repository, as well as network access to provide pushing and pulling to any git hosting service that speaks HTTP. (The SSH transport is not currently supported.) This means that you can push and pull to Bitbucket or GitHub, for example, you need not talk to Team Foundation Server.

Resources