Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) is the centralized version control system option in Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS).
Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) is a centralized version control system offered by Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS). VSTS and TFS both support hosting either Git repositories or TFVC repositories, so users can select a centralized or a distributed version control system (or both).
TFVC is differs significantly from a distributed version control system, like Git. Instead, it is conceptually similar to other centralized version control systems like Perforce or Subversion with added enterprise requirements. It is optimized and intended for users who require extremely large code bases and who require fine-grained security and auditing of version control operations.
Team Foundation Version Control supports two paradigms:
"Server Workspaces": files are read-only and cannot be modified without explicitly being "checked out" from the version control server. (Plug-ins to Visual Studio and Eclipse will perform the check-out from the server automatically.) This is best suited to exceptionally large (up to tens of gigabyte) code bases, since changes must be reported explicitly, therefore it avoids scanning the local repository looking for changes.
"Local Workspaces": files can be modified easily, and there is no need to contact the server. Instead, the local workspace will be scanned looking for changes. Filesystem watchers are available on Windows and within the Eclipse IDE to help support very large (up to a gigabyte) repositories.
Team Foundation Version Control supports "working folder mappings", where a client can select a subset of the version control repository that exists on the server and downloading it to the client computer. This allows users to minimize the scope of the remote repository that they need on their workstation.
TFVC is often, incorrectly, referred to as "TFS". TFS (Team Foundation Server), is the name of Microsoft's on-premises Application Lifecycle Management server. TFVC is a version control offering within TFS and VSTS (along with Git), but it is not synonymous with TFS.
