We just started test-running VSO for source control/Scrum management on a new project. We currently use TFS running in-house for other projects. I love the VSO scrum tools, but, with today's VSO outage, we are questioning whether VSO is practical for us as a source control.
After researching this afternoon, I don't see a solution to have a local backup of VSO. My current thought is to use a local git repo that pushes to VSO. The problem with that is switching technologies is not an easy sell, especially when we already have the local TFS to maintain.
We have thought of using VSO to manage scrum tasks and keep source control in-house, but I really don't like having the two separated (can't link commits and I think that everything should be in one place if possible).
Yes, for you purists out there, we do have a big whiteboard with index cards and stickies for our sprint tasks, but we're still looking at the cloud as another option ;)
To condense my rambling into a real question: Is there a way to use in-house TFS as a local repo that pushes to VSO, or to at least have it mirror VSO?
Are you concerned with VSO losing your source (extremely unlikely), or just experiencing the occasional outage and not being able to check in or get latest for a time?
Using git for source control would be the simplest approach, as you've stated. You'll have the full repository on your development machine and can make whatever commits you like. Changing source control would mean upskilling the team on git, creating a new team project and using git-tfs or git-tf to migrate the history, so I understand why you might not want to change.
With TFVC, if you are using a local workspace you should still be able to work during an outage and make changes. You just won't be able to check in. If VSO has an outage it'll be an inconvenience but shouldn't stop you working.
In terms of using TFS as a mirror that pushes automatically to VSO, the simple answer is "No, you can't do that".
If you used git, you could set you local repository to have two remotes, one being the local TFS server and the other being VSO, but it would still be up to you to push/pull the changes manually between both servers yourself to keep them aligned.
Related
I am looking for an alternative to branching in TFS with the goal of allowing multiple developers to continually integrate into a single changeset that is not in branch (aka a shelveset).
I know that a single user can update their own shelveset, and other users can pull that shelveset - but is it possible to allow several users to modify the same shelveset?
I understand that branching is preferred but I would still like to know if it is possible, maybe by using some sort of TFS powertool or modification.
No this is not possible. A shelveset is owned by a single user. it's also not recommended, as the shelveset is only a single snapshot of the change.
If you'd like something like this, you could consider git tf to create a local git repository which can be synced between two developers. Once they're finished one of the developers can push the change(s) back into TFS.
Moving from TFVC to Git has become easier with the release of TFS 2015u1:
Team Services | TFS 2015
In Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 1, a project administrator can add a Git repo to a team project created with Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC). You can also add a TFVC repo to a team project created with Git. This allows you to adopt a new version control system while preserving all the data in your team project.
As to ways to persuade people to move, that's a hard question. You'd first need to understand what is holding them back, explain the, what advantages Git brings, what disadvantages you see in the current setup. You will probably need to hand-hold or train them so they get comfortable with Git. Using git-tf for a while may give them more confidence to make the move.
I have 2 different TFS repositories (one using Visual Studio Online and another using my own local on premise TFS instance) which I want to keep in sync using git-tfs. How do I need to set things up so that I can work locally in git and push changes up to both repositories? Please note both TFS repositories are using TFSVC.
As the main developer of git-tfs, believe me, that's not possible...
Git-tfs can only manage one TFVC repository.
Short answer: Not support.
If you want to sync Visual Studio Online and local TFS. You can use the TFS Integration Tools to setup a unidirectional sync, that should allow you to ensure that a TeamProject on your local TFS system remains in sync. However, they are complicated to setup and will be painfull to run. And There are commercial options that are ridiculously expensive, like OpsHub.
At work we are using TFS Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) and the workspace is a server workspace (very large codebase). The limitations of our setup are that files checked out are locked for edit by other people. Also there is a culture of not committing until work is complete etc as many change-sets complicate merging later.
I am in no position to change the global rules or culture. I would like to locally setup a mercurial (hg) repo on my local machine. The idea is that I can work on my local copy make as many checkins to hg. When I am done I would like to bundle my changes into one changeset and send it off to the TFS location (also on my local machine). Then immediately checkin the changes to TFS server.
That way to the outside world I appear to checkout and then immediately checkin all of my code, only briefly locking the files changed. But locally in hg I get the full ability to make small checkins and work without worrying about locking files out for edit.
Somehow chain two version control systems, giving me the flexibility of HG locally, but continue using the global TFVC for final checkins.
Any ideas on how this could be achieved?
You can use git-tf and the hg-git. This was an intentional design decision when we built git-tf that this was a supported scenario.
That said... this seems a bit... icky.
You may want to write a few shell scripts to make this workflow a little bit easier.
But even with that, it's hard to imagine troubleshooting this when something inevitably goes wrong.
TFS doesn't have Mercurial support, but apparently does have Git support.
You can use the hg-git plugin to access TFS this way.
More details about the lack of support:
https://hglabhq.com/blog/2014/1/17/mercurial-support-in-tfs-declined
https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3607357-add-mercurial-support-to-team-foundation-server
I’m beginning to consider moving an on-prem TFS 2012 installation to Visual Studio Online. So, one of the first things I started investigating was how we might export our content back out of VSO in the future if we ever decided we needed to. The more I’m looking, the less I’m finding. It seems there was a temporary time period when VSO first went GA that Microsoft offered that capability if you asked to have it done (http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/2014-apr-3-vso.aspx). By implication, that would seem to mean that this isn’t something that is a planned feature of VSO.
Making a commitment to house all of my source and ALM data in a repository I’d effectively be barred from leaving doesn’t sound particularly appealing. Am I missing something, or does Microsoft really not have export capabilities on their VSO product roadmap? It would seem that this would be a show-stopper for many organizations from coming onto VSO, which is a perfect application to put into the cloud IMHO.
For code you can use Git. Even if you start with TFVC, you can use Git-TF. Clone with the --deep parameter to get the full history in a new Git repo, then push back to a new project (Git or TFVC).
For work items the TEAM tab in Microsoft Excel is a very capable export facility for work items, though you don't get links (other than parent child), or attachments.
In the original project, create a query that lists all your work items.
Open Excel, go to the TEAM tab and click 'New List', you should get the option to select your project and the query you just created.
In the Work Items tab select the 'Choose Columns' button and select all the columns you want to migrate.
If migrating to another TFS / VSO project, create that project, open another list in Excel connected to the new project.
Cut and paste all the work items from the original project list to the new project list (excluding the Id column).
Publish.
voilà.
You're right there's no good solution for this yet. However, if you're using Git as the source-control back-end (instead of TFVC), you can easily pull down the entire repo then push it up into any other source control server (non-VSO) with full history.
For TFVC source-control, or work items (or builds, test results, etc), things aren't so easy.
The answer is not black and white: with the TFS Client API you can connect to both platform and read/write as you please. It is not a trivial task, so someone has created tooling, like Brian says. Another option is using the open source TFS Integration Platform: it is complex but with some help you can do it.
What you really must consider and plan is the data model: moving from an ALM Platform to another is never trivial and the complexity lies in the difference of the underlying model and any customization you made.
As long as you do not customize you on-prem TFS, it is very doable, with a reasonable effort to move to VSO and back. In this context customize means: custom workitems fields, types or workflows, server-side plugins; shortly anything that requires code or schema change. Note that you can still customize builds as this is properly managed.
I expect to see more solutions arriving thanks to the new REST API, but it will take time before we see solid products.
So your original question has a positive answer (TFS on-prem -> VSO) using OpsHub, but know what you are doing and, as I write, it is practically a one way journey.
Let's say a person is working in a small team SCRUM environment. Several teams are working on different branches of the same code base. In our team we usually split up into pairs to work on code. Occasionally people need to take time off etc. and it would be advantageous to be able to merge person A's code into person B's codebase. But they often don't want to commit at the end of the day for fear of breaking the build.
This led me to DVCS -- well suited to P2P merging and doesn't require "the big commit". A team member suggested that TFS's shelveset would be able to do this as well. How do the two approaches compare?
Team is currently using Subversion.
The TFS shelveset allows you to create something akin to a changeset, that isn't stored in the main repository. This shelveset is a backup, and can be "pulled" by another developer from another machine. This "private repository", and the ability to "pull" it is as far as the shelveset compares to DVCS. Shelvesets however are not true repositories; they are merely snapshots, they do not maintain history, and you cannot check in or manage changes as you would with the source control repository on your TFS.
A DVCS is a lot more than this; with a DVCS, you have a complete copy of the repository on your machine. You can commit locally as often as you want, storing each and every change you make; you can revert changes as much as you want, since your machine is for all intents and purposes, your source control.
And then you can push your changes to another machine (central repositor, build machine, or whatever). DVCS is a completely different and flexible paradigm, that allows but doesn't require the use of a central repository. It frees you of having to choose between stable and frequent check-ins (you can check-in locally whenever you want, and push when you're stable).
There's a lot more to it. If you like, you can checkout Joel Spolskey's excellent (and hillarious) intro to Mercurial DVCS at hginit.com.
Hope this helps,
Assaf.
There is a tfs-git solution. Git will allow you to do what you want, shape it to how you want the changes to read, then commit to tfs at the end of the day.
I would recommend switching to git anyway.