Team Foundation Client Source Control Explorer
Can the (lite) Team Foundation Client operate the checkout/add folder/add files functions of Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC)? We might like to use TFVC for both our source code and related technical documentation created and managed by our developers and business analysts. When running within the Visual Studio 2005 IDE the TFVC source control explorer allows me to create new folders and add non-source files to version control and checkout/checkin versions.
However the features to add new folders and files or checkout files for edit are disabled when the Beta 3 Team Foundation Client is run on a machine that does not have the full VS 2005 IDE . It does allow numerous other version control features such as checkin, label, get latest, history, etc. I have searched but not found settings that would enable these disabled features.
It seems as though Microsoft is pushing Sharepoint upon us but we are not impressed with its capabilities for "industrial strength" document management of our non-source documents. We want to store, version and label these other documents in a unified tree but we don't see how this is possible with TFS and TFVC. Can all features of TFVC be utilized on a non-developer workstation or are we stuck with using VSS or Sharepoint? Is this a configuration problem?
Also - Is there or will there be an adminstration console for TFVC that solves some of these configuration issues?
[1435 byte] By [
hsiceo] at [2007-12-17]
In the team foundation client all the source control functionality was disabled until you had created a workspace and mapped working directories. However in Beta 2, I couldn't find a way of doing this in the standalone client. Not sure if this was fixed for Beta 3.
A workaround for the moment is to use the command line (tf.exe in B3 or h.exe in B2) to setup working directories. See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0fa04bx6 for more information. Note, the team foundation client looks for a workspace with the same name as your current machine name. Once the working directories have been created the client works just like it does in Visual Studio.
Hopefully this will be fixed for V1. If not, there are other third party companies looking at providing stand-alone Team Foundation Server clients (including one that work on Mac OS and Linux as well as windows...)
Give me a shout if you need help putting together the tf.exe command line syntax or want more information about third party solutions.
Yes, Team Explorer (aka Team Foundation Client in earlier releases) allows you to perform the same source control operations that you would with Visual Studio. When you install Team Explorer, you will either end up with the standalone version if there is no VS 2005 installed, or it will automatically integrate itself into the VS 2005 that is already installed. So, your business analysts can install Team Explorer and use the same Source Control Explorer that you have available in VS 2005.
If you are connected to a team foundation server from within the Team Explorer, you should be able to bring up the Source Control Explorer as usual and click on the combo box on the toolbar that contains the name of the current workspace. The last entry in the combo box will be "Workspaces..." and that will bring up a dialog that allows you to add, edit, and remove workspaces. You'll need to add a mapping of the desired team project using that dialog. Once the team project is mapped, you should be able to get the files from the server and then check in, check out, etc.
Buck
One thing that I'd like to add, which was not at all obvious to me, was that the SourceControl Explorer will show up as disabled until you specifically select to use the "Visual Studio Team Foundation Server" source control plug-in when working with VSTS. I had an installation of Visual Studio 2005 Professional and then installed the Team Foundation Client (a.k.a. Team Explorer) over the top of it (from a business client I am working for). Since i'd been using Visual Source Safe 2005 as the previous source control client, it disabled the ability to work within VSTS source control until that setting was changed. It would have been *really nice* if the TFC install had changed (or at least prompted me to change) my Source Control plugin - again, something not so obvious.
Hope this can save someone some time from digging around : )
Don't feel bad, tons of people (internally and externally) hit the same issue. In post-RTM versions of Source Control Explorer, if the plugin isn't set correctly, it displays a nice message telling you what to do.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for verifying that I'm not at least a *total* idiot : P
I'm pretty sure I have the production release of the Team Explorer client but I didn't see any message. I installed the TE client on top of my VS 2005 Professional install. At what point would the message have been displayed?
