Eric Wise

Eric,

We have been using VSTS for about 6-8 months now and about the only positive thing i can say is about the new source control.

I actuall have 2 posts about this a while back

1) What they got right - devlicio.us/.../Team-Foundation-Server-_1320_-What-they-got-Right.aspx

2) What they got wrong - devlicio.us/.../Team-Foundation-Server_2620_-What-they-got-WRONG.aspx

I am about to move onto another company and they currently DO NOT use VSTS and if i have anything to say about it they will not be moving to it in the future.

It is really sad that MS has tried to build a tool that all .net coders could benefit from from, but in typical fashion the 1.0 version is a flop....:(

Derik

Thats a little harsh... it's an infinitely better source control system than Source Safe.

Wow, I've only experienced good things from TFS. Aside from TeamBuild (which was obviously an afterthought), I find everything else to be in good working order. The source control is good, but more importantly for me is all the work item tracking. The only downside I have with TFS is that I wish the Windows Sharepoint Services integration wasn't there. Anything Sharepoint tends to lead to trouble at times.

BTW, just to ask the obvious question, are you sure you were using the TFS Workgroup Edition (which only allows 5 users)? You said TFS stopped working after 6 months, which is exactly what would happen if you used the TFS Trial Edition.

Oh, forgot to comment about the cost of TFS. TFS itself isn't that expensive, about $2500 per processor (retail) last I checked, and that includes the SQL Server 2005 license. Compare that to something like StarTeam or ClearCase. To access TFS with Team Explorer, each client needs a TFS CAL, which is about $600 (retail). This additional cost is included with any of the VSTS products, or you can get the license by itself to use with VS 2005 Pro or Standard.

A good substitute for TFS is the combination of Subversion, SharpForge and CruiseControl.NET. Most of the functionality of TFS is in those now, and by using either VisualSVN or Ankhsvn plugins for Visual Studio you can access the svn respository right from VS.

I second subversion. It's easy to get into, works all the time and easily backupped as well. Very scriptable and simply works, no fluff, just does what it says it does.

I'd choose subversion over any VSS version whatsoever.

Subversion for the server with AnkhSVN and TortoiseSVN for the client.  

[)amien

-AnkhSVN

don't use it.. in fact don't integrate any source control into the VS ide. Drop down to windows explorer and do it there.

Anything is better than VSS.  :)  MS did TFS a favor by setting expectations REALLY REALLY low with that garbage.

I definitely agree with subversion for source control - it's a very powerful source control system.  Simple and very effective. Well worth your time to investigate.  There are plenty of 'get Subversion running in 30 minutes or less" blog entries out there.

Anhk is useful to see the status of files within your solution while running VS, but I wouldn't recommend using it for checking things in.  It definitly tries to do too much and can put you in some difficult situations. Tortoise with Explorer integration is far better.

Eric, I think you would be wise, pun intended, to go with SVN and Axosoft OnTime.

FWIW, My source control/bug tracking solution is....

Subversion

and

Axosoft (free version... I'm a 1 man shop right now)

Total cost for my business... $0 (and having used Vault and Subversion I would put them at equal levels.. except Vault does have good support if you need/when you need support).

Subversion for the server with AnkhSVN and TortoiseSVN for the client and TargetProcess for the project management!

Oh yeah!

We've tried 'em all:

SourceSafe.

SVN

TFS

Sourcesafe. 'nuff said.

Agree that SVN + Ankh +TortoiseSVN + Nant + Cruise Control can do most of what TFS does. Its a fair old pain in the butt to install them, configure them and join them up though, wouldn't you say?

TFS does it all, and pretty neatly too.  Backups are SQL Server backups. Robust, easily configured.

I agree that the TFS admin tool is *poor* (In fact what does it actually do?), and some elements feel distinctly beta, but on the whole....

TFS just sux, it feels like VSS with a nod to svn, I spend more time battling TFS than I do actually working.

nuf said.

Hello,

I am currently evaluating TFS 2008.  What has people excited is the work flow templates.  "It has more out of the box than anything else out there" I am told.

Perforce's path-like repository was lifted by both Subversion (SVN) and TFS.  If P4 did not raise the price twice this year and had a real ODBC database, I would be happy.  If they had SVN like hooks, I would be in Nirvana.

TFS worries me.  While "out of the box" is important, working with out problems is something I have yet to see out of TFS.  If management did not love the work items and the marketing, we could all get back to doing real work.  

Thanks for the post!