Source Control - Distributed Systems vs. Non Distributed - What's the difference?

Question

I just read Spolsky's last piece about Distributed vs. Non-Distributed version control systems http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/03/17.html. What's the difference between the two? Our company uses TFS. What camp does this fall in?

Answer 1

The difference is in the publication process:

• a CVCS (Centralized) means: to see the work of your colleague, you must wait for them to publish (commit) to the central repository. Then you can update your workspace.
  • You are an active producer: if you don't publish anything, nobody sees anything.
  • You are a passive consumer: you discover new updates when you refresh your workspace, and have to deal with those changes whether you want it or not.

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• a DVCS means: there is no "one central repository", but every workspace is a repository, and to see the work of your colleague, you can refer to his/her repo and simply pulled its history into your local repo.
  • You are a passive producer: anyone can "plug in" into your repo and pull local commits that you did into their own local repo.
  • You are an active consumer: any update you are pulling from other repo is not immediately integrated into your active branch unless you explicitly make it so (through merge or rebase).

Version Control System is about mastering the complexity of the changes in data (because of parallel tasks and/or parallel works on one task), and the way you collaborate with others (other tasks and/or other people) is quite different between a CVCS and a DVCS.

TFS (Team Foundation Server) is a project management system which includes a CVCS: Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC), centered around the notion of "work item".
Its centralized aspect enforces a consistency (of other elements than just sources)
See also this VSS to TFS document, which illustrates how it is adapted to a team having access to one referential.
One referential means it is easier to maintain (no synchronization or data refresh to perform), hence the greater number of elements (tasks lists, project plans, issues, and requirements) managed in it.