Document: From VSS to TFS - An Introduction to Team Foundation Server Version Control from a Visual SourceSafe User's Perspective

Over the course of the last few months, I have been part of a team working to bring TFS Version Control and MSBuild into my organization. My duties have included everything from process definition to hands-on migration of code from VSS into our TFS repository. An additional (and unwritten) role that I have assumed is to help our developers, QA, and Infrastructure people make the mental transition from the way VSS did things to the way TFS does them. This document was born out of those discussions. I decided to write this up with screenshots from the Version Control Tree Browser project on CodePlex so that it would not have any proprietary corporate information within it. That will allow me to post this for general public consumption without losing my job.

Please feel free to download and use it within your own organizations if you think it is worthwhile. I would appreciate a comment to this posting if you like it, but more importantly, if you don't. If there's anything I've missed or misrepresented, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix it. This document will grow with your feedback, so please give all you can.

Thanks,

- Steve

Download: From VSS to TFS

Update: Well it looks like I've had to make my first update. Buck Hodges dropped me an email calling me out on the statement that Microsoft will ship an option to allow automatic Get Latest during Check-out. I don't remember exactly where I picked that tidbit up, but I guess it wasn't as reliable as I thought. I've updated the doc to reflect that this feature has been asked for and will be in a future release of Visual Studio. Buck actually said that he couldn't specify if or when a feature would be added to VS ( probably to cover his butt :) ), but I believe that this is important enough to the VSS-transition crowd that it will eventually get into the product.

Updated Update: It looks like the updated PDF didn't get onto my hosting space correctly. I've had a couple of comments regarding the file being corrupt. I've uploaded the file again and checked it from my home connection and it seems to be Ok. Blogger was also down intermittently between 19-Oct and 22-Oct which didn't help. Everything should be fine now. Please let me know if you come across any further issues. - Steve

Another Update: The PDF file linked on ManicProgrammer.com was lost in a violent database crash. I have uploaded a new version and modified the link above to point to it. Sorry for the inconvenience. - Steve [26-Mar-2009]