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I am pretty new in source control installation and inner workings, although I already had worked with TFS, I have no clue about how to make it work from scratch. Basically I want to have some source control in my personal VS2010 projects, so I may see the code evolution, rollback and etc. but I am a little lost about how may I set it up...as far as I can see, I have to have a Team Foundation Server running, so is it possible to install one in my PC? Is it free? Or there is a better way for doing it? I just want some simple tips like "hey man, here are the steps you should follow" or "this is impossible, you have to have a server" or "follow this tutorial" Thanks a lot guys!

jessehouwing
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Michel Feinstein
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  • Just use [git](http://git-scm.org). – SLaks Sep 25 '12 at 03:18
  • possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3244320/source-control-in-visual-studio-2010 I would agree with SLaks and recommend going for git or something like svn. Team foundation is more suited to when you have multiple authors – celem Sep 25 '12 at 03:21
  • Team Foundation Server is definitely NOT Free. I use Subversion and the AnkhSVN subversion plugin for visual studio. Works great for personal stuff – OJay Sep 25 '12 at 03:21
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    Team Foundation Server definitely does have a free offering. In fact, it has two. TFS Express is the on premises free offering and tfspreview.com is the hosted free offering. You can read more about TFS Express here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/02/23/coming-soon-tfs-express.aspx – Taylor Lafrinere Sep 25 '12 at 12:58

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[Disclaimer: I work on TFS and tfspreview.com]

If you are looking for ease of set up and a free offering then I would highly recommend tfspreview.com. While it is still in "preview" mode, it is certainly usable and safe. The site itself also has a great "learn" section to help you get started. The best part is that it has features available that haven't even been released in the on-premises product yet and the development team is consistently adding new features.

If you have any questions about the service, I'd be glad to answer them.

Oh, one other note, to connect to the hosted service you will need to install the VS 2010 compatibility GDR but that is free also.

Taylor Lafrinere
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  • Thank you for the tip Taylor! Since you work on TFS, you probably is one of the best people I can ask this question, but sorry if its a little too "polemic", but since I am starting to lear more about source control, I want to know more about the tools out there...so the question: "Why should I use TFS? Which are the advantages of the service? And what are the differences between TFS and GIT in a con/pro perspective?" Thanks a lot! – Michel Feinstein Sep 25 '12 at 16:33
  • Taylor I was following the website's instructions to use VS2010: "You can use Visual Studio 2010, but you'll need to install Service Pack 1 and KB2581206 first." but the KB2581206 link is broken :/ – Michel Feinstein Sep 25 '12 at 17:06
  • +1 - also, you can point the Git-Tf bridge @ tfspreview (or any TFS). This allows you to work in a distributed fashion or by yourself to checkin, checkin (offline) then push to the cloud. http://gittf.codeplex.com/ – bryanmac Sep 26 '12 at 00:31
  • What a really wanted was a QUICK and SMALL comparison between Git, Hg, and TFS, like pro/cons, but everything I am finding over the internet is just too huge or metaphorical (like Git is MacGyver and Hg is James Bond ), could anyone do a quick and simple explanation? – Michel Feinstein Sep 27 '12 at 00:17
  • Sorry about the late reply. I am fairly versed on Git and TFS but not much on Hg so I am going to leave that out. Also, TFS and Git have some avid followers who would always swear their solution is better in all cases. I'll try to avoid having this turn into a flame war. Here is some high-level pros and cons for each: Git: Pros: Distributed, Offline Checkin, Simplified Merging, Very Easy to set up. Cons: Can be complicated and unintuitive, Limited Windows Tooling, No free closed source hosting on GitHub, Doesn't scale with huge projects, No path based permissions Need more comment space – Taylor Lafrinere Sep 27 '12 at 13:14
  • TFS: Pros: Great Windows tooling, Scales with the largest projects in the world, It is part of a full ALM suite where Git is just a source control solution. That is, it has first-class integration with Work Items, Build, Agile/Scrum/Kanban processes, etc. Has Path based permissions. Cons: Not as easy to set up or get started with as Git, although tfspreview.com has improved this. Merging has more features but can also get more complicated. No offline checkins or history. No support for distributed version control. – Taylor Lafrinere Sep 27 '12 at 13:21
  • The comparisons for these two systems could go on for days and not everyone will agree on every point. These are high level points without much details. If you have questions or specific areas where you would like to see comparisons, I can help with that. – Taylor Lafrinere Sep 27 '12 at 13:22
  • Taylor, Thank you for the explanation! Could you just make a simple explanation about the terms: 1- Distributed 2- Offline Checkin (isnt this some part of distributed?) 3- Scale with huge projects 4- Path based permissions (Some of the terms are probably easily explained with examples). I thought TFS had Histoy, at least there is the "View History" and "Get specific version" options. Thanks again! – Michel Feinstein Sep 30 '12 at 06:06
  • @TaylorLafrinere are you still busy? :) – Michel Feinstein Oct 04 '12 at 18:15
  • 1. Distributed: You can find a good discussion between distributed and centralized version control here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/111076/1023608 2. Offline Checkin: This comes with a distributed version control system by definition but nothing precludes a centralized system from building it. – Taylor Lafrinere Oct 05 '12 at 11:22
  • 3. To work with a Git repository. When you clone a Git repository, you clone the entire thing, including all of its history. To work with a TFS repository, you only download the latest versions of the portions you want. Git repositories are optimized for fast writes and slow reads. TFS repositories store much more metadata but can do both relatively fast. TFS can scale to millions of files with years of history and a database size > 1TB. Git repositories are not meant to scale that high. Instead, you would want to break projects that size into many different Git repositories. – Taylor Lafrinere Oct 05 '12 at 11:26
  • 4. Security in Git is managed at the repository level. In general, you can either read or write to the whole repository or you can't. With TFS, you can manage permissions within a repository in path space. That is, you can say developer 1 can read and write everything under $/project1/foo, can read everything under $/project1 and can't read anything under $/project2. 5. In TFS, you can certainly view the history of the entire repository and get specific versions but you have to hit the server to do this. Above, I meant that TFS does not support "offline" history. – Taylor Lafrinere Oct 05 '12 at 11:32
  • @TaylorLafrinere Thank you very much for the explanation! You have been very helpful – Michel Feinstein Oct 28 '12 at 06:27
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GIT is a brilliant source control that has allot of easy to use functionality. In fact that have an extension for VS2010 as well. Check under the extensions menu and install the GIT extension. You can them commit and update from within VS itself. Super easy to use!

Enjoy :)

Mitch Dart
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    Actually, I am profoundly unimpressed by the GIT SCC extension (but I don't have time to fix it) – SLaks Sep 25 '12 at 03:27
  • where may I find a quick and easy tutorial about GIT? I tried before to learn more about it, but all the material I found was huge. – Michel Feinstein Sep 25 '12 at 04:10
  • Sorry about the wrong link. I fixed it. mFeinstein do you want tutorials on the VS 2010 plugin for GIT? Or just GIT in general. The extension is much easier to use instead of their command line interface which does take some getting used to. – Mitch Dart Sep 27 '12 at 00:48
  • I just wanted a quick and easy tutorial about Git...I am trying to figure how things work before make them work, so this way I can compare the different solutions out there (TFS, Git, Hg, etc) – Michel Feinstein Sep 28 '12 at 20:36