What TFS tool would you recommend?

Question

I am mostly use to using Subversion for my source control. However, my current position has me using TFS. The UI of the TFS explorer and its integration with Visual Studio has me a little disoriented. I miss having tools like SmartSVN where I could see at a glance what I've modified and is pending checkin.

What tool sets do you recommend for use with TFS in general, and what tools do you know of that enable such visualizations? I know that the TFS explorer will show you pending checkins, but I miss having a separate tool that monitors file system changes and auto refreshes the list of files.

Answer 1

Checkout/modification information is available in the solution explorer. Checked out items have a check mark next to their name/icon. Checked in items have a lock. Items checked out to others have a person icon. You can also do a right click and view pending changes. I've found that this shows me all pending changes for all the projects I have loaded in team explorer and is thus a little cumbersome. I'd like it to be aware of my current project and only display files related to it.

Answer 2

The only 3rd party software I've found for working with TFS that doesn't involve Visual Studio is the Attrice Sidekicks. Unfortunately, for the day to day work of source control and work item management, it didn't really help.

There's also Microsoft's TFS Powertoys, which adds a new command line app that makes some things easier. I use that for doing "revert unchanged", but it can do other stuff.

Unfortunately there don't seem to be any way to deal with source control that doesn't involve either the command line tools or Visual Studio. It's a huge pain, since I don't need VS open for any of the other work I'm doing, so I'm stuck with VS eating a bunch of RAM.

Answer 3

There's always SVNBridge

Answer 4

Sometimes my pending changes window lies to me, both by claiming I have changes where I don't, and (far worse) by not listing changes I have made, which obviously can be a disaster.

One crude workaround is to go to the Source Control Explorer, right-click on a folder, and select compare.

I do this when I've made so many changes that I'm uncertain if the list in pending changes is correct.

Answer 5

Teamprise (http://www.teamprise.com/) is a stand-alone tool that supports what you're talking about for TFS (as well as integration into other IDEs, including Eclipse). I've never used it, so I can't vouch for it, but it's from the people at Sourcegear.and I've been impressed with their other products in the past.