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Considering starting to use git for source control, so I've looked at it a little bit. But one big question I have is about how to see one's entire source repository with git.

You know how with a TFS source repository, you can just look at your "Source Control Explorer" in visual studio, and see the entire repository and drill down into all of the source code for your organization? And, secondarily, if you want to (with repositories that are not excessively large anyway) you can pull down the entire repository to your local dev machine if you want to.

How does one do that type of thing with git? As far as I can see, there is no equivalent. Am I just missing something? It seems like with git, that you can only pull down "clumps" of your codebase at a time to work on it...

jessehouwing
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  • I should also mention that this is within the context of Azure DevOps Server and utilizing Visual Studio 2019. I've only scratched the surface getting into Azure DevOps - perhaps there is some corresponding "look at everything" functionality there? –  Apr 14 '20 at 17:55
  • You can browse the code and branches more easily on the server. Go to the Azure Repos tab and look at the files and branches subsections. – jessehouwing Apr 14 '20 at 17:56

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You can browse the sources and branches in the browser quite nicely.

Files

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It's not available directly in Visual Studio, but it has many of the features you're looking for. The Files section is scoped to a specific branch though.

There are a few significant differences between TFVC (which is very file-folder oriented) and git (which is very commit-branch oriented). As such the views provided by the tools are different.

A TFVC repo can host multiple branch trees. In git you often break that out into different git repositories. In TFVC a branch is a fancy folder. In Git it's a pointer to a state in history. With all of these conceptual changes, there is also a difference in how the tools show you the code.

And of course, when you clone a Git repo locally, you get all the history with it, so there are many different tools that let you explore repositories on your own system. In Visual Studio you can check out a branch and explore to your heart's content.

Philippe
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jessehouwing
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