Wipro Technologies

Team Foundation Server

Name Author(s) Reviewed by Ramakrishna Reddy Battula (Emp Id: 139190) ramakrishnareddy.battula@wipro.com Sudheer Kandal (Emp Id: 134361)

Account / Business Group Yell Barwil/Transport Vertical

Team Foundation Server

Wipro Technologies 1.Introduction ......................................................................................................................3 2.Team Foundation Server Features ...................................................................................3 2.1.Workspace..................................................................................................................3 2.2.Branches.....................................................................................................................3 2.3.Branching and Merging.............................................................................................3 2.4.Path Space..................................................................................................................4 2.5.Version.......................................................................................................................4 2.6.Shelving.....................................................................................................................4 2.7.Email Alerts ..............................................................................................................5 2.7.1.Required Permissions .............................................................................................5 2.7.2.Add or Edit Alerts...................................................................................................5 2.7.2.1.To add alerts.........................................................................................................5 2.7.2.2.To edit alerts........................................................................................................6 3.Working with Source Control Workspaces......................................................................6 3.1.Maintaining Multiple Workspaces.................................................................................6 4.Differences between Team Foundation and Visual SourceSafe.......................................7 4.1.Reliability.......................................................................................................................7 4.2.Scalability......................................................................................................................8 4.3.Changesets.....................................................................................................................8 4.4.Sharing and Pinning.......................................................................................................8 4.5.Check-Out and Check-In...............................................................................................9 5.Features that Work Differently in Team Foundation........................................................9 6.List of Syntax, Conventions and Limitations...................................................................9 6.1.Names lengths:...............................................................................................................9 6.2.Comment lengths: .........................................................................................................9 6.3.Files and Paths: ...........................................................................................................10 6.4.Names: ........................................................................................................................10

Team Foundation Server

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1. Introduction
Team Foundation source control provides standard source-code version control functionality, which can scale to handle thousands of developers. Beyond the typical source control functionality, Team Foundation is also an enterprise class software configuration management product that provides integrated version control, issue tracking, and process management for development teams. Besides being integrated into the Visual Studio environment with other Team Foundation technologies, such as creating a build and work item tracking, the source control also includes a stand-alone graphical user interface and a command line interface.

2. Team Foundation Server Features

2.1. Workspace
A workspace is the information about the working folder mappings. Each mapping associates a folder in the server with a local folder on disk.

2.2. Branches
Branching is a feature that allows a collection of files to evolve in two or more divergent paths Labels vs. branches Use branches to create isolation Use branches for supported releases (i.e. maintenance branch) Use labels to tag a file or a series of files with a distinct notation (i.e. daily builds)

2.3. Branching and Merging

Plan your branching structure along merge paths Avoid baseless merges where possible

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Prefer full merges to cherry-pick merges Merge frequently Always create a top-level folder underneath a new team project to serve as a main branch Intelligent

Once you have created a branch, moving changes from the branch source to the branch target or from the branch target back to the branch source is very easy. Team Foundation Source Control maintains the relationships of branched items and the merge history.

2.4. Path Space

Creates new copies of the items based on their path (works the same as copy but it maintains a history in order to allow merge of future changes) Storage savings- if files are identical we only store the file once Allows easy and logical access- just do a get like you would any type of file or folder

2.5. Version
Each branch has a number. Branch number is created from the revision number of the file where the corresponding branch forked off. Each version of the file can have multiple branches

2.6. Shelving
Shelving is another new, key concept to TFS. Shelving allows a developer to store their pending changes to the server without checking them in. TFSC introduces the concept of a shelve set, which is similar to a change set except that its used to store files in a personal space on the server. Users can upload pending changes, comments, and associated work items to this personal space which allows for full maintenance, backup and disaster recovery whilst they work

Team Foundation Server

Wipro Technologies 2.7. Email Alerts

Alerts are notifications in e-mail when certain events occur in our team project. We can subscribe to alerts for ourselves, and can select to receive alert messages in either HTML or Plain Text format. You can select to receive an alert when certain events occur. For example: Any work items change. Anything is checked in. A build status changes. A build finishes. Alert subscriptions are stored on the server by team project, and we can add different alerts for each team project that we have permission to open.

2.7.1. Required Permissions

To perform these procedures, you must be a member of the Readers group or have the View project-level information permission set to Allow. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

2.7.2. Add or Edit Alerts

You can create alerts for yourself, or for other people, that send an email when events that you specify occur. You receive alerts in e-mail and can obtain additional information about the alert by clicking links in the alert.

2.7.2.1.

To add alerts

1. With a team project node selected, on the Team menu, click Project Alerts. 2. Select the check box next to the alerts you want. 3. For each alert, in the Send to column, add the e-mail addresses of the team members who should receive the alert. You can use a distribution list to simplify managing recipients when team members are added or removed. 4. For each alert, in the Format column, select HTML or Plain text for the type of e-mail message to be sent. 5. Click OK to save your alerts for the selected project.

Team Foundation Server

Wipro Technologies 2.7.2.2. To edit alerts

1. With a team project node selected, on the Team menu, click Project Alerts. 2. For each type of alert, you can change the following: Select or clear the check box to turn the alert on or off. In the Recipients column, type the e-mail addresses of the people you want to receive each type of alert. In the Format column, select the format of the e-mail messages for each type of alert. 3. Click OK to save your changes.

3. Working with Source Control Workspaces

A workspace is your client-side copy of the files and folders on the source control server. When you add, edit, delete, move, rename, or otherwise manage any source-controlled item, your changes are persisted, or marked as pending changes, in the workspace. A workspace is an isolated space where you can write and test your code without having to worry about how your modifications might affect the stability of checked-in sources or how you might be affected by changes that your teammates make. Pending changes are isolated in a workspace until you check them in to the source control server. You can synchronize your workspace with the most recently checked in changes on the server by using the Get Latest command. If you want to have multiple copies of source on your computer, you can create more than one workspace for a specific source control server.

3.1.Maintaining Multiple Workspaces

Team Foundation is designed in such a way that you do not have to create multiple workspaces on your computer to complete everyday tasks. A single workspace can contain multiple team projects. However, you can create more than one workspace on your computer for many reasons. Two of these reasons are described here.

Team Foundation Server

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First, you might want to maintain multiple copies of source, each pointing at different versions. This can be helpful if you are working on a new release but need to be able to refer back to the source code from a previous release. The second reason to consider creating a "test workspace" on your computer is to make it easier to complete code reviews. If you typically build and test other people's code as part of a code review, you might want to create a dedicated workspace.

4. Differences between Team Foundation and Visual SourceSafe

Visual SourceSafe and Team Foundation source control enable you to accomplish the same basic tasks: develop more than one version of a product at the same time, change a released version of a product without affecting other versions, quickly retrieve a batch of related files, determine who made a change and when, compare revisions of a file, and move changes from one version into another. The Team Foundation source control client interfaces were designed to be familiar to Visual SourceSafe users. Both products offer a command-line client and Visual Studio 2005 integration. Team Foundation source control does not have a separate user interface like Visual SourceSafe. But despite many similarities, Team Foundation and Visual SourceSafe differ in fundamental ways SourceSafe Explorer and the plug-in for Visual Studio read from and write to a Visual SourceSafe database, which is a collection of files that are usually stored in a shared network folder. Team Foundation is a client-server source control system that uses a .NET Web service to access items stored in a SQL Server database. Team Foundation source control's architecture, offers increased performance and reliability.

4.1.Reliability
Since Visual SourceSafe does not have a server component, operations involving the transfer of data from the client to the database are non-

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transactional. This means that an operation cannot be rolled back if a problem occurs. Team Foundation is a client-server application in which write operations occur in the database by way of stored procedures that are not subject to network connectivity issues. Furthermore, certain operations are performed by using transactions so that they can be rolled back in the event of an error. This architecture makes sure that the source files are not unknowingly corrupted. It also makes sure that groups of files that contain dependent changes are all committed to the source control server at the same time, as a presumably welltested change set.

4.2.Scalability
Team Foundation can support teams of up to 2000 users whereas Visual SourceSafe is recommended for teams of twenty or less. Team Foundation servers can contain as much data as a SQL Server database allows (terabytes) and your hardware can support, whereas the recommended size limit for a Visual SourceSafe database is 4 GB.

4.3.Changesets
Conceptually, the internal structure of a Visual SourceSafe database and that of a Team Foundation source control server is similar. Both databases and servers are organized hierarchically. Folders contain files. Files consist of versions that are identified by number and date/time of creation. Team Foundation advances a concept that does not exist in Visual SourceSafe; changeset. A changeset is a logical container in which Team Foundation stores everything related to a single check-in operation: file and folder revisions, links to related work items, check-in notes, a check-in comment, and other information such as who submitted the change. For more information, see Working with Source Control Changesets.

4.4.Sharing and Pinning

Team Foundation does not have equivalent commands to Visual SourceSafe's Share or Pin features. When you migrate Visual SourceSafe projects to Team Foundation, Pins in a Visual SourceSafe database are replaced by labels.

Team Foundation Server

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4.5.Check-Out and Check-In

In Visual SourceSafe, you must do an explicit check-out and check-in only if you are editing a file. In Team Foundation, every action requires an explicit check-out and check-in.

5. Features that Work Differently in Team Foundation

Unlike Visual SourceSafe, Team Foundation does not perform a silent Get operation when you check out a file. In Team Foundation, multiple users can check out and change the same item at the same time. In Visual SourceSafe, checkouts are exclusive, by default. However, you can lock a file in Team Foundation to prevent other users from checking it out or checking in changes. For more information, see Understanding Lock Types. Branch and merge Visual SourceSafe has very basic support of branch

and merge because Visual SourceSafe does not store the merge history between two branches of files or folders. However, Team Foundation source control does have support for merge history. Without merge history, you end up doing baseless merge in Visual SourceSafe.

6. List of Syntax, Conventions and Limitations

Team Foundation source control has the following naming syntax, conventions, and limitations:

6.1.Names lengths:

Check-in note names can be up to 64 characters long. Check-in policy names can be up to 256 characters long. Label names can be up to 64 characters long. Workspace names can be up to 64 characters long. Shelveset names can be up to 64 characters long.

6.2.Comment lengths:
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Check-in comments can be up to 2GB. Check-in note values can be up to 2GB. Label comments can be up to 2048 characters long. Shelveset comments can be up to 2048 characters long. Workspace comments can be up to 2048 characters long.

6.3.Files and Paths:

Server paths can be up to 259 characters. Local file paths fall within Windows limits of 259 characters long (including the file name), and 248 for a directory. Files in the Team Foundation source control server have no size limit. The total size of content in the Team Foundation source control server has no limit.

6.4.Names:
Most names in Team Foundation source control cannot begin or end with spaces or tabs. Any character can be used for names or labels, except the following: (Angle brackets (< >),Colon (:), Asterisk (*), Forward (/) and backward slash (\) , Question mark (?) ,Quotation mark ("), Pipe (|),A dollar sign ($) cannot be the first character in a file name , Label names cannot contain (@),Workspace and shelveset names cannot contain (;) )

References http://teamsystemrocks.com/tutorials/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/

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