CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#tfsvisual-studio-2013tfs-sdk
Andy Giebel
Andy Giebel

Reputation: 281

Alternative to Microsoft.TeamFoundation.* and TfsTeamProjectCollection

I'm simply looking for some sort of alternative to the Microsoft teamfoundation dlls. We are using visual studio 2013 do develop our software, and our updater software pulls information from TFS.

Most people using the software do not require Visual Studio and are using Visual Studio Team Explorer 2008 instead (licenses are cheaper than a full visual studio license).

The issue arises when the people using team explorer try to update, but have an older version of Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client. Team Explorer 2008 uses Microsoft.TeamFoundation 9.0 where Visual studio 2013 uses version 12.0.

We have tried bundling the 12.0 dll with the updater, but the chain of dependencies after that just keeps going, and will need to constantly bundle/update those dlls.

If anyone has any ideas for an alternative, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Edit: I realize I didn't mention the two dll's reall in question here. The two in use are:

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client;

And there are only 3 lines of code even using these. These three lines are what I'm currently (and unsuccessfully) trying to find an alternative for:

TfsTeamProjectCollection projects = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("some uri"));
VersionControlServer vsStore = projects.GetService<VersionControlServer>();

ItemSet items = vsStore.GetItems(sourcePath, VersionSpec.Latest, RecursionType.OneLevel);

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1998

Answers (2)

Tingting0929
Tingting0929

Reputation: 4202

If you don't want to install Visual Studio 2013, you could only install Team Explorer 2013. Or you could install Visual Studio Community version. This version is free.

I suggest that you could install a Nuget package(TeamFoundationServer.ExtendedClient) for your project. Then you don't need to install VS or Team Explorer on other machines. All client assemblies about TFS are added to your project after installing this package. Install this package is also free. The assemblies in this package are 14.0, and it is compatible with TFS 2013 and you could use the same with 12.0.

Upvotes: 2

Giulio Vian
Giulio Vian

Reputation: 8343

Why not upgrading users to Team Explorer 2013, the same you use?

It has no additional licensing (you need a CAL even if you use a browser, and you must have a call for 2008, don't you?) and can be installed side-by-side.

Upvotes: 1

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