Hello,

Microsoft finally released the Team Foundation Service in late October 2012 after its long time in the preview phase. I was already using the TFS Preview which was free but I was happy to see Microsoft releasing the Team Foundation Service also FREE for upto 5 users. Isn't that great news? I know there are bunch of other free source control repositories (Github, Bitbucket, SVN etc.) out there but I somehow like TFS better. Also the other good thing about the final release was that I didn’t had to do any kind of migration of my code from preview to final release version. Just changed the TFS connection URL and it worked like a charm.

Anyways, if you are a startup with small team and need some awesome Source Control along with all the good Project Management, Continuous Integration (Build, Test, Deploy), Team Collaboration, Agile/Scrum planning etc. features than Team Foundation Service is your answer. Microsoft has not yet released their pricing for more than 5 users and will be releasing it sometime in early 2013. What if as of now you have a team more than 5 users and you want to use Team Foundation Service, the good news is you can use it for FREE but when they release the final pricing, you will have to transition to the paid plan.

Lot of story, getting to the point, connecting to Team Foundation Service with Visual Studio 2012 is straight forward and would work out of the box but it wont for previous versions of Visual Studio. You will have to upgrade to the latest service pack first and than install the forward compatibility pack. (1st : Service Packs & 2nd: Forward Compatibility packs)

For Visual Studio 2010:

• Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1.
• Visual Studio 2010 forward compatibility for TFS 2012 and Team Foundation Service.

For Visual Studio 2008:

• Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.
• Visual Studio 2008 forward compatibility for TFS 2012 & Team Foundation Service.
• Restart your system.

Visual Studio 2008 will not work if you only put https://xxx.visualstudio.com. You will have to put your collection name too as shown below.

By the way, it doesn’t matter if you are an Apple Application Developer or Android App Developer, you can still use Team Foundation Service as your source control. Below are few links to connect to Team Foundation Service with other IDEs:

• Connect Eclipse to Team Foundation Service.
• Connect XCode to Team Foundation Service.

Happy coding.

Vishal Mody