A Source control question for the product group
Please correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that TFS source control is designed for developers only. In a enterprise setting, there are also a lot of non-developers that need to save their work such as word docs, excel work sheets, etc in a source control. The may not be part a "team" and they really don't care about work items, process guidance, etc. How would these folks use the source control or the TFS source control is a wrong choice for them and they should use something else.
Thanks!
[513 byte] By [
Gary_MN] at [2007-12-17]
Unless I'm completely wrong, the users are forced to create a team project before using the source control features. You can't just connect to the source control and add files. They are not forced to use other features but are forced to create them as they create a team project. Is that true?
You are correct. All files must go into a team project. The team project is a scoping mechanism for setting up permissions, policies, etc. Once you have a team project, what you place in source control and where is entirely up to you. This is not limited to source files. You can add any file type.
Ed
http://blogs.msdn.com/edhintz
One option you should explore before adding non-developer files to TFS source control is whether the file format can be merged by a textual merge engine. Right-click on the server in Team Explorer -> TFS Settings -> Source Control File Types. By default, MS Office files and several common binary formats (e.g. graphics) have merging disabled. In practice, this means that TFS will prevent more than one person from checking out a file with those extensions, since it would be unable to merge their changes together. If your enterprise works with any unusual file types, be sure they are included in this list.
Another feature worth exploring is the Team Project Portal. Depending on your workflow, the Portal might be a good place to store some of your documents, spreadsheets, etc. SharePoint has rudimentary source control features built in.
