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SVN vs. Team Foundation Server [closed]

SVN vs. Team Foundation Server [closed]

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Closed 8 years ago.




A few months back my team switched our source control over to Apache Subversion from Visual SourceSafe, and we haven't been happier.

Recently I've been looking at Team Foundation Server, and at least on the surface, it seems very impressive. There is some great integration with Visual Studio, and lots of great tools for DBAs, testers, project managers, etc.

The most obvious difference between these two products is price. It's hard to beat Apache Subversion (free). Team Foundation Server is quite expensive, so the extra features would really have to kick Subversion in the pants.

Does anyone have practical experience with both?
How do they compare?
Is Team Foundation Server actually worth the expense?"

Asked by: Guest | Views: 305
Total answers/comments: 4
Guest [Entry]

"I joined an Open Source project over at CodePlex, recently. They use TFS for their source control and I have to say that it's absolutely magnificent. I'm incredibly impressed with it, so far. I'm a huge fan of the IDE integration and how easy it is to branch and tag your code. Adding a solution to source control is something like two clicks, if you've already got everything configured properly.

Now. Is it worth the hefty price tag? I don't think so. The benefit to working on projects at CodePlex is it lets me get the experience with TFS that I need, in the event that I have to use it somewhere later. If you want good IDE integration for your Source Control, go grab VisualSVN integration package. It's a much, much cheaper investment to get a lot of the same features (free on non-domain computers BTW)."
Guest [Entry]

"I'm surprised that someone who has used Subversion in the past would even have a want/need for TFS source control.

My experience with TFS (2005) has been pretty horrible. I've read all kinds of whitepapers & guidance as to how to properly structure your source for various development needs.

Our simple situation, where we have a trunk with mainline development, and integration branch where we integrate changes & deploy from, and a releases branch to keep track of past releases is very common and straightforward, but we are continually running into problems.

My main issues with TFS:

Merging is a PAIN in comparison to subversion.
There are unfixed bugs. I ran into one about renaming/merging that has been known for 2 years and a fix will never be released for 2005. We ended up moving our branch to a ""broken"" folder and we ignore it now.
Putting read-only locks on your files is friction. Who says I need to edit batch files and build scripts inside of TFS so that it will ""check it out"" for me? Subversion knows which files changed. There are no readonly locks there.
Speed. TFS is dog-slow over a WAN, and it's really only usable if I VPN into my work computer, which makes my dev experience really slow overall.
Lack of good command-line and explorer integration. IDE integration is really nice for the day-to-day Get-Latest, adding files, and checking in, but when you need to do things across many projects, it's nice to have good tools at your disposal. And before someone jumps down my throat claiming tf.exe works well... it's not really a cmd line tool. For example, checking in code shouldn't pop up a modal dialog.

...the list goes on. I think even with all of the integration, there are free alternatives that are far superior."
Guest [Entry]

"I joined an Open Source project over at CodePlex, recently. They use TFS for their source control and I have to say that it's absolutely magnificent. I'm incredibly impressed with it, so far. I'm a huge fan of the IDE integration and how easy it is to branch and tag your code. Adding a solution to source control is something like two clicks, if you've already got everything configured properly.

Now. Is it worth the hefty price tag? I don't think so. The benefit to working on projects at CodePlex is it lets me get the experience with TFS that I need, in the event that I have to use it somewhere later. If you want good IDE integration for your Source Control, go grab VisualSVN integration package. It's a much, much cheaper investment to get a lot of the same features (free on non-domain computers BTW)."
Guest [Entry]

"We're a VS.NET shop, and we implemented:

Bugzilla for issue tracking
Apache Subversion as a source code repository back-end
VisualSVN Server for managing SVN on the server
TortoiseSVN (in Windows Explorer) and AhnkSVN or VisualSVN (in Visual Studio) on the client
CruiseControl.NET for automated builds

Cost: $0
Benefits: Priceless

If you're a small team, or not ready to buy into the who TFS process, SVN and open source tools are the way to go."