Git vs Team Foundation Server [closed]

Question

I introduced Git to my dev team, and everyone hates it except me. They want to replace it with Team Foundation Server. I feel like this is a huge step backwards, although I am not very familiar with TFS. Can someone with experience compare branching support on TFS to Git branching? Also, in general, what are the pros and cons of TFS? Am I going to hate it after using Git for a few years?

Answer 1

Original: @Rob, TFS has something called "Shelving" that addresses your concern about commiting work-in-progress without it affecting the official build. I realize you see central version control as a hindrance, but with respect to TFS, checking your code into the shelf can be viewed as a strength b/c then the central server has a copy of your work-in-progress in the rare event your local machine crashes or is lost/stolen or you need to switch gears quickly. My point is that TFS should be given proper praise in this area. Also, branching and merging in TFS2010 has been improved from prior versions, and it isn't clear what version you are referring to when you say "... from experience that branching and merging in TFS is not good." Disclaimer: I'm a moderate user of TFS2010.

Edit Dec-5-2011: To the OP, one thing that bothers me about TFS is that it insists on setting all your local files to "read-only" when you're not working on them. If you want to make a change, the flow is that you must "check-out" the file, which just clears the readonly attribute on the file so that TFS knows to keep an eye on it. That's an inconvenient workflow. The way I would prefer it to work is that is just automatically detects if I've made a change and doesn't worry/bother with the file attributes at all. That way, I can modify the file either in Visual Studio, or Notepad, or with whatever tool I please. The version control system should be as transparent as possible in this regard. There is a Windows Explorer Extension (TFS PowerTools) that allows you to work with your files in Windows Explorer, but that doesn't simplify the workflow very much.

Answer 2

The whole Distributed thing of Git is really really great. it gives a few features Shelvesets don't have (in the current product) such as local rollback and commit options (such as Eclipse's localhistory feature). You could alleviate this using developer branches, but lets be honest, many developers don't like branching and merging one bit. I've been asked to turn on the old style "exclusive checkout" feature in TFS a few times too often (and denied it each and every time).

I think many large enterprises are quite scared to allow a dev to just bring the whole history into a local workspace and take it with them (to a new employer for example)... Stealing a snapshot is bad, but taking away a whole history is even more troublesome. (Not that you couldn't get a full history from TFS of you wanted it)...

It's mentioned that it's a great way to backup, which is great for open source again where the original maintainer might stop to care and removes his version, but for a enterprise plan this again falls short for many enterprises as there is no clear assignment of responsibility to keep backups. And it would be hard to figure out which version to use if the main 'project' vanishes somehow. Which would tend to appoint one repository as leading/central.

What I like most about Git is the Push/Pull option, where you can easily contribute code to a project without the need to have commit rights. I guess you could use very limited users and shelvesets in TFS to mimic this, but it isn't as powerful as the Git option. Branching across team projects might work as well, but from an administrative perspective it's not really feasible for many organisations as adding team projects adds a lot of administartive overhead.

I'd also like to add to the things mentioned in the non source control area. Features such as Work Item Tracking, Reporting and Build Automation (including lab management) greatly benefit from a central leading repository. These become a lot harder when you use a pure distributed model, unless you make one of the nodes leading (and thus go back to a less distributed model).

With TFS Basic coming with TFS 11, it might not be far off to expect a distributed TFS which allows you to sync your local TFS basic to a central TFS in the TFS 12+ era. I'll put my vote for that down in the uservoice!

Answer 3

The key difference between the two systems is that TFS is a centralized version control system and Git is a distributed version control system.

With TFS, repositories are stored on a central server and developers check-out a working copy, which is a snapshot of the code at a specific point in time. With Git, developers clone the entire repository to their machines, including all of the history.

One benefit of having the full repository on your developer's machines is redundancy in case the server dies. Another nice perk is that you can move your working copy back and forth between revisions without ever talking to the server, which can be helpful if the server is down or just unreachable.

To me, the real boon is that you can commit changesets to your local repository without ever talking to the server or inflicting potentially unstable changes on your team (i.e., breaking the build).

For instance, if I'm working on a big feature, it might take me a week to code and test it completely. I don't want to check-in unstable code mid-week and break the build, but what happens if I'm nearing the end of the week and I accidentally bork my entire working copy? If I haven't been committing all along I stand the risk of losing my work. That is not effective version control, and TFS is susceptible to this.

With DVCS, I can commit constantly without worrying about breaking the build, because I'm committing my changes locally. In TFS and other centralized systems there is no concept of a local check-in.

I haven't even gone into how much better branching and merging is in DVCS, but you can find tons of explanations here on SO or via Google. I can tell you from experience that branching and merging in TFS is not good.

If the argument for TFS in your organization is that it works better on Windows than Git, I'd suggest Mercurial, which works great on Windows -- there's integration with Windows Explorer (TortoiseHg) and Visual Studio (VisualHg).