Tips and tricks to increase productivity / efficiency with Team Foundation Server

Question

I have to use Team Foundation Server 2010 at my company and I'm not very happy with it. There are so many features or just default behavior I'd expect from a CVS that TFS seems to lack (compared to svn, git or perforce, which I have experience with), so my question is: which tricks do you know, which hidden features are out there to make TFS easier to use / more convenient?

Perhaps I should elaborate a bit and list what I think could be better:

• The default check-in action when associated with a task is "resolve", though in 99% of all check-ins, I only want to "associate" my commit with the task. There's only 1 commit (the last) that "resolves" the task, so why is that the default? Can I change that?

• In the check-in dialog, when double-clicking a file, Notepad is launched and shows the contents of the file. Notepad. Seriously? What about the Visual Studio editor? Anyway, I'd like to see the differences to review the changes I've made, not the contents of the file. The diff tool is hidden in a submenu. This might seem trivial, but when I have to check 10+ files it's just annoying to always right-click, open submenu, click to diff.

• The diff tool. Merging with it isn't really straightforward, also the conflict detection mechanism is somewhat lacking. The (Tortoise-)SVN / Git merge tools or that of Perforce are way better here.

• Speed. Creating a new file, opening a file for the first time, comparing a file with a previous version etc takes forever (that is, 3-10+ seconds). Our TFS server is in-house and has absolutely no load - also why does Visual Studio have to contact the TFS server when I just create a new file (which I might not even check in)? Is there perhaps an option to turn that off?

• Readonly files. All files are read-only when checked-in and become writeable when edited for the first time. This is really annyoing when the application crashes because of that. Windows Azure for example modifies a web.config file and fails whenever I check out because the file is read-only then.

These are just the most prominent things that I think are really annoying and unnecessary. I didn't have the pleasure to branch and merge yet, but from what I've heard so far it won't be very enjoyable as well...

So again: If you know some tricks, settings, featuers that make working with TFS less inconvenient, please share them.

Answer 1

1) is customizable if you reconfigure the work items. (You can also change any combination of fields/states/available values/etc.)

2) is a pain, but if you use the dockable "Pending Changes" window instead then it'll open the file in the editor. I suspect this is a drawback of the Checkin dialogue being modal.

3) you can customize - the option's a little tucked away, but it's on Tools/Options dialogue under Source Control/Visual Studio Team Foundation Server/Configure User Tools. Some third party tools (like BeyondCompare) have pages on their website with details of how to configure them with VS.

4) I've not seen the speed problems, although I do agree about the overhead on creating a file. Not sure if that's configurable.

Answer 2

For the #1 The solution in TFS 2010 is not the greatest one but it works. You need to modify the registry key on your machine as follows:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Behavior

Change ResolveAsDefaultCheckinAction to False

Answer 3

TFS Power Tools might be a useful extension for you.

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/c255a1e4-04ba-4f68-8f4e-cd473d6b971f

For #2, are you using the "pending changes" window in Visual Studio to keep track of files that are modified? Double clicking on a file there keeps you in the Visual Studio editor.

For #5, make sure Tools->Options->Environment->Documents "Allow Editing of read-only files; warn when attempt to save" is checked.

TFS is hella frustrating. Good luck!