We are going to applying VSTS 2010 in our company. This includes Visual Studio, TFS, TFS Build and ALM. It's predictable that we would encounter a wave of new questions about their usage.
But the problem is I don't know which places we could do questioning. StackOverflow is programming base question site and ServerFault is not very active. How do you think about? Which places and their advantages and disadvantages?
afsharm
You could ask your questions here, there is already a handful of question on tfs, visual-studio and msbuild.
You could also ask on Team System forum MSDN. (Or both)
We are trying to start a Visual Studio ALM community on Stack Exchange that is dedicated to these questions.
If you want to join in you can Commit to the Visual Studio ALM proposal.
Whilst you wait for the ALM site to get to beta these sites/blogs might help you:
The WoodwardWeb this is a very useful site for me.
Brian Harrys TFS blog
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.
In visual studio, I can do a code review for someone and add comments to their code... In their instance of visual studio they can see those comments. All good so far.
But if you go to Team Foundation Server (TFS) Online, you can't see those comments at all. And if you make code comments in the tfs online web interface, those comments are not seen in visual studio.
I thought I would be able to see all comments across both visual studio and in TFS Online but it doesn't seem to work that way.
Is there a setting I'm missing, am I misunderstanding the functionality, or is this unimplemented?
Code Reviews and Lightweight code commenting are two complementing features, but also unrelated features. Yes they both allow you to comment on code, but as you've found out, the data between these two is not shared.
There isn't much you can do right now, except for going to the Visual Studio User Voice and explain what you'd love to see (or search for an existing suggestion and add your votes there).
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.
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I use Microsoft Visual SourceSafe for version control. I would like to change this approach and use newer software for this work. What are the differences between these three applications? Which one is better?
Are these solutions integrated with visual studio?
TFS is an Application Life-cycle Management solution, SVN and Git are source control only.
TFS does source control as well as issue tracking, document management, reporting, continuous integration, virtual labs for testing etc.
TFS's Source Control & SVN are centralized source control, Git is distributed.
There have been many discussion on Stackoverflow about TFS vs SVN.
TFS is the most tightly integrated into Visual Studio.
SVN has a few third party options for integrating into Visual Studio and they are quite nice, but not as tightly integrated as TFS.
Git has GitExtensions which allows for a low level of integration within Visual Studio.
Better is a big discussion, but along the same lines you have to factor in cost.
SVN is free, where as TFS isn't. However; if you have your Visual Studio through an MSDN subscription and this is of high enough level, then you will get TFS2010 for free through your MSDN subscription downloads when released. This may be a factor which tips the balance.
As for the integration with Visual Studio, you can't beat Team Explorer for TFS. However, I have used Anhk with SVN and that works well too. I think the rest of this has been said :-)
Hope this helps.
The question is rather old, however in case someone stumbles on it: since January 2013, git has been integrated into TFS (announcement: http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/2013-jan-30-vso#git support). What it means is that the team can now use git as the source control tool (instead of, but not alongside, the "built-in" TFS version control system) while still using the rest of TFS for activities such as continuous integration, issues tracking, and so on.
Original discussion on MSDN: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/01/30/getting-started-with-git-in-visual-studio-and-team-foundation-service.aspx
StackOverflow has a large set of relevant discussions (https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=tfs+git), cannot point to anything specific.
I can only speak to Visual Studio integration for SVN. I've used both VisualSVN and AnkhSVN. They both have pretty tight integration and allow you to perform various operations from the Solution Explorer menu the way you would have normally done it with VSS. Version 2+ of Ankh (one I currently use) has been very stable for me and worlds better than the older versions.
This looks like a fairly detailed discussion of using Git with Visual Studio.
This is in addition to the other answers, not a full answer as Michael Shimmins satisfied most of what I would say
TFS (especially 2010) is incredibly approachable for implementing source control techniques that you would have been terribly hard-pressed to execute with VSS. Branching and merging is much easier with TFS than SVN to start and follow over time. I would say the same thing about Git from an user interaction perspective, but those tools are getting better slowly.
Git is a great tool if you spend the ramp up time and the techniques that community take as standard practice are well worth the effort in any version control system. You're still going to run into conflicts with SLN and CSProj/VBProj files in teams of > 2. This is a result of the way those files are structured and managed.
Having a look around at WebsiteSpark from Microsoft - the deal is good (especially if you were looking to go down this path already). But I'm one of those people that likes to 'wait for the next version' if I'm in no rush to sign up. One question that's been bugging me is whether or not the program includes upgrades to Visual Studio and/or they will change the starting pack at some point?
Currently, If you sign up now, you get 3 copies of Visual Studio 2008.
If you're umming and ahhing about the scheme, is it worth waiting and hoping that they adapt their program so that it comes with VS2010? Or maybe that they'll offer free updates to those already in the scheme?
(This question may be a little subjective I guess and it probably applies to the BizSpark side of things as well. Have there been any hints set in other Microsoft programs that might indicate the outcome? ).
See Scott's answer here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/09/24/announcing-the-websitespark-program.aspx
This is great. Will is cover software upgrades i.e. VS 2010 when
available?
Yes - while you are in the program you
can always download the latest version
of any of the software. So once VS
2010 is released you can download that
as well.
Hope this helps,
Scott
Scott gu confirmed on his blog that the liceses will cover 2010 when it's released.