CodePlex Client Beta 2 Released

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We just released beta 2 of the CodePlex Client. This release includes a number of notable features:

Anonymous Access

We shipped the server-side piece of anonymous access during last Monday's CodePlex deployment. Today's Beta 2 CodePlex Client (cpc.exe) release allows anybody to get read-only access to the source code of any project on the CodePlex site.

Yeah, anybody. No, you don't need to be a developer or coordinator. You don't even need a CodePlex web site account! Just download the beta 2 client and go. :) (You might want to read the installation and workflow wiki pages first.)

Team Foundation Client (tfc.exe)

Beta 2 marks the first time we've publicly shipped tfc.exe. This command line application is nearly identical to cpc.exe except that it will work against arbitrary TFS servers.

The key differences are:

  • cpc.exe can check out based on as project name; tfc.exe checkout requires a TFS server URL and server path.
  • cpc.exe can take your CodePlex username and turn it into the TFS username; tfc.exe does not change your credentials in any way.
  • cpc.exe can be used for anonymous access to the CodePlex TFS servers; tfc.exe cannot.
  • tfc.exe will automatically send your logged in user credentials to the TFS server; cpc.exe will not.

Because of the way cpc.exe/tfc.exe work, there may be performance issues on extremely large projects (10s or 100s of thousands of files). Very large projects should consider use Team Explorer or Teamprise instead.

Configuration via Environment Variables

In addition to configuring cpc.exe and tfc.exe through their .config files, you can also configure via environment variables. This is better suited for UAC on Vista as well as multi-user scenarios. For more informaiton, see the configuration wiki.

Source Code

A couple weeks ago we made the CodePlex Client its own project on the CodePlex site, including using it as our live source control server.