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I work in a shop that's adopted TFS for source control. We're happy with the integration in VS and the other features it offers, so it's likely we're not going to switch to another platform. However, features for team collaboration and documentation are lacking compared to other solutions, most notably SVN + Trac.

Has someone been able to integrate TFS 2010 with TRAC?

EDIT: It's been asked that I clarify my intent here. It's very simple. I'm just asking if the TRAC project management and bug/tracking system can be used in conjunction with TFS. And, if so, what would it take?

Remember, I'm not looking for a Sharepoint solution--I've already got that. I'm asking if it's possible that TRAC and TFS can get along.

(Long rambling clarification on what I'm looking to get out of TRAC removed. The question is simply "Can TRAC work with TFS?")

villecoder
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  • It's trivial to change the "view" of the wiki. Just change the "Team Wiki" link in the left nav to point to the home page of the wiki instead of to the wiki library. – John Saunders Dec 07 '11 at 21:36
  • Thanks for the tip. After I saw your comment and read what I added to the question, I realized that I got off-topic. The question is simply can the two pieces of software work together? – villecoder Dec 07 '11 at 22:15
  • Please be more specific about how you want them to "work together". TFS is very extensible. There is certainly a way to get it to do what you want. Just tell us what you want. – John Saunders Dec 07 '11 at 22:23
  • I'm not sure how I can be more specific. Can TRAC use TFS 2010 as its SCC backend? Can TRAC create/edit/associate TFS work items (as opposed to its own work items)? Long story short, can we use TRAC with TFS 2010? – villecoder Dec 07 '11 at 23:15
  • That's how you get more specific. – John Saunders Dec 07 '11 at 23:39

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Not so much of a trouble a the Trac side. There is FOSS everywhere, a lot of modularity and flexibility. No quite the same at the other side. I've read about the trouble even with one-time migration from SVN to TFS. Despite the source is all open and well documented, there no evidence of good support, that should tell you much about the chance for getting even more - constant synchronization.

Facts: MS SQL server is the base for TFS. No connector available for MS SQL server as a Trac db backend, although there are several python bindings to MS SQL server available, or the option to connect via ODBC. But just an option, nothing ready AFAIK.

I'm not aware of any well documented open TFS API as foundation for migration and integration. And I'm not convinced this will ever change. At Redmond (Microsoft) they are reportedly only considering what seems important to themselves: "helping customers with IBM Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest tools." And most probably it this behavior will persist and SVN/Trac keeps very low on the ToDo for them.

[Edit2] While TFS has some support for bidirectional communication, these scenarios are not recommended. It mostly aims at integration, read: sucking information in, not communicating with other information systems like Trac.

[Edit] Just for sub-task of repository browsing you could try to write code to push a duplicate of changes to another (SQLite|MySQL|PostgreSQL) repo that Trac supports right now. But I consider this is rather wasteful and ugly, and fact remains, that it's hard, if possible at all, to do the same tracking without such big code duplication. Ultimately, if you want to live without the actual check-in source changes you must at the very least send information about the meta-data like resource ID's (for link generation) to find the data in TFS.

I'm looking into that right now. So take the following as half-educated advise to the best of my knowledge and feel free to correct/discuss.

dplante
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hasienda
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  • I don't really need Trac to integrate with TFS's work item tracking. If all it did was track check-ins with their associated comments, I'd call it good enough. What we're really trying to achieve is a development-friendly wiki/milestone tracker. I just don't like Sharepoint's implementation of a Wiki and I don't feel like asking for a PO for the tools out there to make it more like a Wiki. – villecoder Nov 21 '11 at 14:50
  • I see, but how would you do tracking without access to the check-ins? That has been one of my major concerns, but I've added more thoughts to answer your comment. – hasienda Nov 21 '11 at 20:59
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    Maybe you could de-ramble this a wee bit and have a bit less rumour/speculation? – Kev Dec 07 '11 at 01:54
  • Not an easy task, but I'll try. Thanks for asking. – hasienda Dec 07 '11 at 21:36
  • For what it's worth, the TFS API for migration and synchronization is available, the TFS Integration Platform: http://tfsintegration.codeplex.com/ – Edward Thomson Dec 07 '11 at 21:59
  • Migration and synchronization yes, but not encouraged, and for which content? I.e. wiki content is not supported at all yet. OP wanted Trac + SVN. Digging into the resources of the site you linked to you'll see in Microsoft_Visual_Studio_TFS_Integration_Platform_Data_Sheet_FINAL.docx that the SVN adapter is "planned" but I noticed that at least one-way SVN -> TFS is supported now. There is no well documented API apart from studying source code, as suggested in the current, de-rambled answer. If someone isn't ready to invest a lot of time and money, he/she will get nowhere with that platform. – hasienda Dec 09 '11 at 21:40