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My current gig uses Visual Studio 2008 and TFS 2008 (project is .NET CF 3.5, hence the requirement for the legacy versions of everything). I have the TFS Power Tools installed, with the Windows Explorer shell integration, and it's pretty good, for the most part, except that it seems to be missing a few core options, namely being able to view a file/folder's check-in history. Newer versions of the TFPT have it, but not 2008 (at least, not that I have been able to find).

My last gig used SVN, and I really liked the power and freedom that TortoiseSVN gave me. I know that such an animal as "TortoiseTFS" does not exist, but I have been reading up on SVNBridge, and thought I might give that a try, since Tortoise has an excellent "View Log" feature that I quickly came to rely upon.

So, that being said, here is my question: Can TortoiseSVN/SVNBridge peacefully coexist with the default TFS source control plugin for Visual Studio? Idea would be to primarily use the TFS plugin for checkins, shelving and whatnot (since we have gated check-ins), but use TortoiseSVN for Explorer functions (updates, "checkouts", history, etc)?

I see from other discussions that people have gotten Tortoise and Ankh to live together happily, so I'm optimistic, but I'm thinking this might be a different animal. I might just throw it on my dev box and tinker, but figured I'd ask to see if anyone else had played around with this before I did. Thoughts?

bahrep
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Mike Loux
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  • Note that you can easily build and configure applications target .net cf 3.5 while connected to TFS 2012. That is not a valid excuse to still be on TFS 2008. Get that old crusty crap upgraded. – MrHinsh - Martin Hinshelwood Jun 06 '14 at 12:59
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    We will be upgrading to TFS 2013 in the not-too-distant future, so that's not as much of an issue. I only wish we could upgrade our "rusty crap" (as you so eloquently put it) to VS 2012 as well, but when we tried hacking our solutions in VS 2012 to try and target .NET CF 3.5 (which is NOT supported officially by MS), we lost the ability to debug into our devices. Too bad. – Mike Loux Jun 06 '14 at 13:47
  • Remember that TFS 2012 and TFS 2013 still support 2010 build servers so that you can do what you are looking at: http://nakedalm.com/visual-studio-2012-update-2-supports-2010-build-servers/ – MrHinsh - Martin Hinshelwood Jun 06 '14 at 16:57
  • I am not 100% sure, but I am guessing our build agents are also running 2008. We are working on migrating everything on the back end to 2013, but due to 32-bit issues, it has proven to be...interesting. – Mike Loux Jun 06 '14 at 21:14

1 Answers1

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TortoiseSVN integrates with Windows Explorer, not Visual Studio. Therefore plug-ins for Visual Studio shouldn't conflict with it.

alroc
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  • This is true, but it's not so much a conflict with Tortoise itself that I am concerned with, as what two different actions will do with the files. For example, if I have a new file and do an SVN Add on it, and then add the file to a project in VS (where TFS generally does the adding automatically), will that cause conflicts? And if I revert changes in SVN, will that be reflected in TFS? That sort of thing. – Mike Loux Jun 05 '14 at 23:13
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    That's not so much a client compatibility issue as it is a workflow problem. IME, Visual Studio gets cranky when you start messing with files outside Project Explorer, regardless of what you're doing WRT source control. The simple answer is "don't do that." – alroc Jun 06 '14 at 01:51
  • Yeah, that was more or less what I thought (and my experience has been in the past). So, if I am going to use SVNBridge outside of Visual Studio, then I should probably do EVERYTHING outside of Visual Studio, or use a companion plugin (like AnkhSVN) instead. And since we have work items that we associate with our commits (and the aforementioned CI gated checkins), I think I will simply leave well enough alone and be happy with what I have. I will mark this as the answer, but your comment is the real useful tidbit. Thanks, alroc! – Mike Loux Jun 06 '14 at 13:41