I need to add some source code to TFS and having never used it before i would like to get some advice on the best way to structure it.
I have one solution 'GenericLibraries'. This is a set of class library projects which could be used by any application within the business.
I have 2 other solutions 'FormsApp1', 'FormsApp2'. Both of these solutions contain dll references
to the libraries compiled in the 'GenericLibraries' solution.
My question is how to best place this source code into TFS?
Does all the source code have to be placed into one TFS project because 'FormsApp1' and 'FormsApp2' contain references to assemblies in 'GenericLibraries' OR can i have 3 TFS projects? Or is there another standard way of doing this?
Ultimately i would like to have Continuous integration set up too, and both 'FormsApp1' , and 'FoprmsApp2' would always compile against the latest version of the assemblies in 'GenericLibraries'.
This is a single TFS Team Project, with a common library. Consider the following structure:
$/MyTeamProject/Dev/GenericLibraries
$/MyTeamProject/Dev/MyProduct/FormsApp1
$/MyTeamProject/Dev/MyProduct/FormsApp2
Related
I would like to create three separate ASP.NET MVC solutions, all pointing to the same Model project. How do I keep changes made from one solution update the others?
Ex, is there is way in Visual Studio to "Add new project from Source Control" like you can with a whole solution?
So you are hoping to have 3 solutions that share a common project.
You can achieve this in 2 ways.
NuGet
Have the project in it's own solution and create a NuGet package of the output, your other solutions can then consume the NuGet Package.
Shared Project
A shared project is easy to do, just ensure that your shared project is available in the same workspace as your solutions.Do a get latest, You can then just right click on the solution and choose add existing project.
Any changes you make will need to be checked back into source control, these changes will then appear in each 'copy' of the project in each of the different solutions.
The shared project works fine, but you may have to make some considerations when you come to building the solutions, the main one being that if you only make a change to the shared project would you want all of the solutions that consume it to be built on check-in?
We are moving to TFS 2010 (from PVCS) for source control and work item tracking
As I understand it you should have under source control for each TFS project everything that projects solutions, etc. need to build.
This OK for new .NET solutions/projects, but we have a large collection of legacy Delphi 6 projects with shared source libraries we want to port into TFS for source control and build. It is how we manage multiple TFS projects that want to sare a specific set of source files between them that is my problem here.
Historically with PVCS we have had projects for each solution (say A & B), and a seperate project for common source code (say C). Users would get C then get either A or B (checking out as required) on disk this would maifest as something like this:
$\Projects\C
$\Projects\B
But B & C are seperate PVCS archives.
Now fast forward to life with TFS 2010 as our ALM solution...
If we create a TFS project (1) that contains the source repository for the common code (C), that projecs can obviously access it (lets say the TFS project also contains the solution A) and all is good.
We now create a new TFS project (2) in which to make solution B. Beacuse solution B is wildy different to solution A we had no reason to share TFS project 1's source control so we made a new source repository rather than branching from 1. Now later on we discover a need for solution B to access some common files from C (in 1). Oops!
The question is this; can I perform some source control wizzardry that lets me add a folder in the 2's soruce control that is a (to steal a file system term) symbolic link into 1's source control for the common code C?
Edit
I should point out this is all legacy code and the shared source library (C) is just that shared source it does not build into a library or other binary we could simply add to A or B.
In TFS 2010, as you may know, they introduced the concept of a project collection (PC). Each project collection is an aggregate for team projects (TP). Each PC is stored in a separate database, and the VCS is stored in the database.
This means that there is one VCS repository per PC, not TP. Each TP is (by default) the root folder in each VCS (i.e. TP1 will be at $/Prj1, TP2 might be at 4/Prj2, etc.)
One more point is that you do not want to have one solution per TP. Think of a TP as a suite of products, and a solution as a part of that.
Symbolic links, as per Visual Source Safe, no longer exist in TFS, and I'm not sure you need them. It is not considered a good practice to create a dependency between one solution and the source code of another solution.
What I suggest you do, is have each solution in your codebase depend only on its own code, and on other solutions' binary deliveries.
What will happen is that if Sln_A depends on Common_Sln, you will build Common_Sln, and bring its binaries from the drop location as part of your Get. Then, add the binaries as references.
This will solve your problem, with the added benefit of transforming a tight coupling where a dependency may break your dependent solution's build, into a situation where you do not change or upgrade your dependencies until they are ready and you are ready for them.
Does this help solve your problem? This is how I do this with the projects I consult on.
HTH,
Assaf.
I am aware that Team Foundation Server Source Control does not support the shared file (link) concept of Visual Source Safe.
I currently have a scenario where we link an AssemblyVersion.cs file across multiple projects. This means that in our MSBuild script, we can update the version in one file and have it propagate throughout the projects.
How would I accomplish this with Team Foundation Server Source Control?
My first thought is to create the file in a central location and have each project include that specific file in that specific location (instead of copying it to the local source directory)...
I don't know if you can embed the AssemblyInfo.cs as a link file.
But look here, looks like it works:
In our Teambuild, we have a task which updates the AssemblyFileVersion and other attributes.
We use this Task
Edit:
Actually it works with a multi solution architecture with round about 29 projects and
on TFS 2005 and 2008.
I personally like the second solution cause you don't need to change all projects,
only need to implement in daily/nightly build.
TFS 2008 and Common Libraries
I have created a Team Project called "Common Library" that will host code used in numerous different Team Projects throughout TFS. For sake of argument, lets say we have 2 distinct Librarys under the "Common Library" Team Projects, MailProject and LoggingProject. Other projects throughout TFS will be using the binary representation of these projects via branching and not the actual source code.
What is the best way to set up the folder structure for this Team Project? Do I add the project to the "Common Library" and simply "include" the bin/release folder as part of the project?
I have seen some examples of people creating a seperate "Deploy" folder. I assume this is synonamous with the bin/release folder?
We do not want the source code available in other solutions.
Currently, each project has the dll included in the project. Using a mailing module as an example, many projects need the ability to mail. The common module is very stable and mostly static.
However, what if there is a change in the mail module. It seems there would be a better way, than to check out each project and update the dll. Is it possible to allow TFS to grab the latest mail module any time a 'get latest' is called? Either explicitly or implicitly.
Unless you really require the source code for the libraries to be available in the other solutions my advice would be to include the binaries for the libraries in the projects that would use them not really having any explicit link between the two in TFS. Custom labelling of the library builds could be helpful to easily return and rebuild any chosen version of the shared libraries.
If the shared libraries require different versions for different projects then the obvious solution would to create a separate branch for every version of the libraries that need to be customised to a particular project.
TFS does not have a concept similar to SVN's 'externals' though - so if you include a branch from the shared libraries in a project and than branch that project it is very difficult to propagate changes correctly.
I suppose you could also use the Get task in the build and get the latest version of DDLs into the current project from another one, but verify if you can point of Workspace of another project (I have not tired it and MSDN is somewhat vague here). You might need to have a separate workspace for the shared project.
Yet another alternative would be to publish the DLLs for common components to a known location on every build of the shared libs and for individual builds to get whatever version is available from that common location (network share) even via the Copy task. This is simplistic and may cause problems with versioning of the common components but should work well enough in simple case.
We Have a large VS solution using project references which is build by TFS Build like so:
Solution
- Project 1
- Project 2
- Project ...
- Project N
Because the solution is too large we have several smaller solutions which we use day to day:
SubSolution
- Project 1
- Project 19
The problem is that developers working on SubSolution find that it is not building because the project references could not be found, so they change the projects to use file references.
This then goes on to break the TFS Build which cannot find these file references because they have not been built yet (Even though the projects are in the same solution). Is there a way around this tug of war between the two types of references. What is the correct way of splitting out your solutions?
What is the correct way of splitting out your solutions?
Check out this chapter from the TFS guide by the Patterns & Practices team:
Chapter 3 - Structuring Projects and Solutions in Source Control
Pay special attention to this note to the "Partitioned Solution" scenario (which I believe you're actually trying to implement):
Unlike previous versions of Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2005 relies upon MSBuild. It is now possible to create solution structures that do not include all referenced projects and still build without errors. As long as the master solution has been built first, generating the binary output from each project, MSBuild is able to follow project references outside the bounds of your solution and build successfully. This only works if you use project references, not file references. You can successfully build solutions created this way from the Visual Studio build command line and from the IDE, but not with Team Build by default. In order to build successfully with Team Build use the master solution that includes all of the projects and dependencies.
Regardless of how you organise your build, developers should understand how references work, and be aware when they make changes to references that they shouldn't check those changes in unless they intended to make a change to the build process.
On the subject of organising your builds - as Dmytrol says, project references should work between solutions (As long as the target is already built, however that's also the case for file references anyway).
My advice would be to group your projects into small workable solutions and use project references within those solutions. Your main solution file / build can use project references too, however if you find project references between the smaller solutions too difficult to maintain you can use file references instead, and control the build order through project dependencies or the project build order (accessible within Visual Studio by right-clicking on a project in your solution).