Category: Visual Studio

Today we were poking around the new Git offering in Team Foundation Service (hosted TFS), and when I tried to clone our test repo I got the following error:

error: SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK.  Details: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed while accessing https://<account>.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/_git/<repo>
fatal: HTTP request failed

Since we didn’t get this error at home, suspicion is that our corporate proxy was interfering with the SSL check somehow.  The solution was simple, just open Git bash and issue the following command:

git config –global http.sslVerify false

After doing this, I could interact with the repo normally.

A few months ago, in conjunction with the release of Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft also released a hosted TFS (Note: this hosted service is called Team Foundation Service; Team Foundation Server is the thing you install onsite.  I’m going to call Team Foundation Service “hosted TFS” for brevity and clarity).  This is kind of the third version of hosted TFS, which in Microsoft-land means it’s pretty good.  True to form, VS 2012 is pretty good, and in contrast to previous versions has a good focus on agile teams.  I’ve had the opportunity to use this for well over a year now, and I’ve seen hosted TFS grow into something you need to look at before you deride it.  A wise move on Microsoft’s part is that hosted TFS is free for teams up to five, so you can explore and use at no cost.

Perhaps the greatest downside to TFS is that you were completely locked in to the TFS version control methods.  The displeasures with this were great in number.  Git, especially Github’s implementation, gained popularity in enterprises because of its distributed nature and ease of collaboration.  Microsoft’s first foray to combining the features of Git and TFS was git-tf, which presented a git-like overlay onto TFS repositories.

Just this past week Microsoft dropped the bombshell that Git was a first class choice for version control in hosted TFS (read Team Foundation Service updates – Jan 30 or watch Git Support Added to Visual Studio and TFS).  Woah.  All the planning and tracking features of TFS (including the scrumboards) and the DVCS workflow of Git, in one offering.  Right now, Git is a feature in hosted TFS only; it’s planned for TFS but no timetable has been announced.

Also released was the CTP of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 (VS2012.2) (see also Git init VS), which adds git support directly into Visual Studio 2012.  Warning—do not install this update if you have existing TFS repos.  There are several reports of it corrupting existing TFS repos.  You might want to sit this one out, and keep your eyes peeled for a future version that won’t kill your existing repos.  Stay tuned for updates and more information.  This will be fixed soon, I’m sure.  In the case of my team at the day job, we are connecting to TFS 2008 with VS 2012, which is not a supported scenario (even though it seems to work fine for us).  This is a known issue, see the compatibility matrix at Compatibility between Team Foundation Clients and Team Foundation Server.  If you’re using TFS 2008 or earlier, skip this update.  Otherwise, you’re apparently fine.

Using Git in Hosted TFS

For more information on using Git in TFS with VS 2012, see Getting Started with Git in Visual Studio and Team Foundation Service, or the hosted TFS docs at Visual Studio with Git.  I have not installed the update, so I’m going to use Bash for this walkthrough.

Your Windows Live Id can’t be used by VS or any of the other tools, so you have to create an alternate credential first.  Once you’ve logged in, click on your user name in the upper-right corner and choose “My Profile”:

Then select the Credentials tab, and click on “Enable alternate credentials”

Enter a secondary user name and a password—only one is allowed per account.

You’ll enter these credentials a little later when you clone the repo.

Next, create a new Team Project with Git:

Give a name, a description, a Process template (project tracking style), and choose Git as your version control.  (Note: As I later found out, don’t put spaces in repo names. Not only is %20 a pain to remember and type, but VS appears to get confused with where it put the Nuget packages. I kept getting all kinds of errors when trying to build the project. Fortunately, it was a demo only.)

TFS will then create your project (they are certainly optimistic!):

If this is a new project, create a folder where you want the project files to be.  If you have an existing project, you can work with that, no problem.  Either way, open Git bash and navigate to your working folder.  To clone a new project, issue the following command:

git clone https://<accountname>.visualstudio.com/defaultcollection/_git/<repo>

A couple things to note—since this is a URL, remember to HTML encode the repo name if you have spaces (e.g., repo%20name).  Also, TFS projects are arranged into collections.  If you haven’t created a collection, use defaultcollection in the path.  If you’ve created a collection, use that.  If you have an existing repo, use git init rather than git clone.  You’ll be prompted for a username and password, and this is where you enter the secondary credentials you created earlier.

Now let’s see how this all works.  Open up Visual Studio and create a new project in the folder you cloned into.  Once the project is created, switch back to Bash and list the files.  You can see you’re working in the master branch.  A status check shows your new files.

If you try to add your files, and get an error like below, there is a simple fix:

You probably need to change the handling of LF and CRLF; check this with git config core.autocrlf.  True means that line endings will be changed on commit/checkout.  What you do depends on the systems your team members are using; there is a good discussion at http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-config.html.  If everyone is using Windows, you can set this to false and line endings will remain unchanged.

Add your new files and commit them.  If you’re new to Git, this commit will save the new files in the local copy of the repository.  Now, you can push the files to your repo:

Looking back in TFS, this is how we see the repo:

Let’s take a look at something basic—branching.  Create a branch (I called mine sprint1), then make a small change to a file.  Commit the changes, and push to TFS (remember to use git push origin sprint1).

Looking back in TFS, we switch branches with a dropdown list on the far right:

After switching branches, you can select the history tab and see the history of the branch.

Clicking on the message for one of the commits brings up the commit changes:

Drilling down in the Source Explorer to the file where you made the change, you can choose the compare tab and see the diff between commits.

This view can also be changed into an inline view:

Conflicts are resolved locally, before pushing to the repo.  You do this in whatever client or tool you’re using.

TFS vs. Github – a comparison

In the table below, I’ve attempted to compare the major features between Github and Git in TFS.  It’s far from complete, and I’ll happily make corrections or add more comparisons if you leave a comment.  I’m a light user of Github, I actually use Bitbucket for my side projects.

Feature	Github	Hosted TFS w/ Git
Forking	Yes	No
Pull requests	Yes	No, changes are published directly to the repo
Communication	SSH, HTTPS	HTTPS only
Gists	Yes	No, nothing similar
Agile planning	No	Yes
Work item/bug tracking	Basic	Advanced
Planning tools	None	Advanced
Wiki	Yes	No
Clients	Git Bash (and clients based on CLI, such as TortoiseGit), github:windows, Eclipse plugin, VS 2012 (with Git updates)	VS 2012 (with Git updates),  Team Explorer Everywhere (Eclipse plugin and cross-platform CLI), Git Bash (and clients based on the CLI, such as TortoiseGit)
Private Repos	Pay only	Unlimited, free for teams up to 5
Public Repos	Unlimited	None, not meant for public repos
Permissions	Repo	Granular

If you’d like more information about Git, check out Syncfusion’s free Git Succinctly, or O’Reilly’s Version Control with Git.

Summary

The addition of Git to TFS as a source control option is very exciting.  If you’re used to the way Github or Bitbucket implements Git, you might find this implementation lacking a couple of your favorite features, even though the TFS implementation has all of Git’s features.  This may or may not be a deal breaker for you.  That you can use either VS or Eclipse or Bash or other Git tools is great, and that users on any OS can use TFS.

Ankh is in RC1, but the concept of
running both Tortise and Ankh–two Subversion clients–at the same time
offends the sensibilities of some.  You can configure a custom toolbar in
Visual Studio as a Tortise toolbar, and use Tortise for Subversion source
control.  Full story at http://vorpal.cc/blog/development/tortoisesvn-in-visual-studio.

(hat tip: Mike
Gunderloy)

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I dislike how VS 2005 handles solutions, but I thought it was just me. 
Victor Garcia Aprea has a good
commentary on the subject:

Of course, I still think Visual Studio is totally messing up the
Project and Solution terms, and that such core concepts should deserve a bit
more of attention; here goes my view on it so you can take a look and make
your own mind

Glad to know I’m not alone.

Hot off the presses, teh Visual Studio Express Editions will be permanently
free: http://forums.asp.net/thread/1262185.aspx

This is great news for programmers of all stripes.  Even better news are
some of the cool starter kits:

Beta: Skype Wrapper for .NET Starter
Kit

The Beta of the Skype Wrapper for .NET Starter
Kit is a managed code wrapper with samples that enables to programmatically
connect and consume Skype services from Visual
Basic, Visual
C#, Visual
J#, or Visual
C++ Express.

Teacher Starter
Kit

The Teacher Starter Kit is a rich client
application for keeping track of students, course rosters, and assessments or
grades using Visual
Basic or Visual C# Express.

Maker Faire Demo: Skype Home
Automation

The Skype
Home Automation extends the Skype Starter Kit to show how
you can use an instant messaging application to communicate with a home server
for the purposes of automation and monitoring, like checking if the lights are
on, or even play your favorite music.