Git’ing It On with Team Foundation Service

  • Article

Guest post by Adam Gallant

I’m meeting a lot of developers who are targeting multiple platforms, particularly folks building mobile applications, and a common mode of managing source control and/or contributing to projects when people are working together across distances has been using Git.

Another offering that has been growing in popularity is the Team Foundation Service! It’s free for the first five users, so go and sign up now at https://tfs.visualstudio.com! You can use the service to do agile planning (including SCRUM/Kanban), solicit and track user feedback, track bugs, manage version control, do automated builds/ continuous integration, and even do continuous deployment to Windows Azure.

clip_image002

All of these things from a number of different developer tools and project tools like Visual Studio, Eclipse (through Team Explorer Everywhere), and even through Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel.

I did a webcast called “ALM as a Service” a little while ago. You can watch the video, on demand, here. And now, the Team Foundation Service has integrated Git for version control as an option! It’s a full-fledged, 100% compatible implementation of Git. See some more of the capabilities explained here .

The important points are:

  • You get a choice of traditional Team Foundation version control or Git when creating projects
  • Both version control types have a bright long term future
  • Visual Studio client support is provided currently through normal client-side Git implementations
  • You can use common Git techniques to work with your source code
  • You can interact with common Git repositories online
  • Support for Git for on-premise. TFS is not currently available, but is in the works for a future release!

To get a better understanding of all the capabilities available to software teams of all sizes in Visual Studio 2012 ALM, check out the Visual Studio Dev Centre. There’s tons of great information, videos, links, whitepapers, and other stuff to give you the info you need. You can also check out my blog for more information.

The merging of the Team Foundation Service and Git bring together the most comprehensive ALM capabilities available and one of the most common repositories.

Join the Conversation

Are you explored or are planning to explore this functionality? I’d love to hear feedback – start a new conversation on the Canadian Developer Connection Group on LinkedIn and let us know what you think.