Getting to grips with Git

Git is a world apart from Team Foundaation Server and people seem to be frightened at a first attempts with it, as it can seem complex. Stick with it though and you'll soon see past that and how simple it can be. Git is a distributed source control system, so it allows you to work disconnected from the main repository and still commit. This 'commit' is to your local repository. You should commit often. Once happy that all your tests pass should you push to the remote repository.

1. clone - get the source code from your remote git repository
2. Make your changes
3. commit - commits your changes LOCALLY (not the remote git repository)
4. push - commits your changes to the REMOTE repository

For me, working disconnected is the number one advantage for Git over TFS. Number 2 is the ability to create branches. Essentially just a seperate work stream you can use for working on seperate features. Once happy, you then merge your branch into the master branch (which is the main repository).

1. clone - get the source code from the remote git repository
2. branch branch-name - create a branch branch-name
3. Make your changes on your branch
4. commit - commits your changes LOCALLY (not the remote git repository)
5. push origin branch-name - commits your changes to the REMOTE repository
6. checkout master - switch to the master branch
7. merge branch-name - merge the feature branch into the master
8. commit and push !!!

I'd strongly recommend that you use the git bash until you get to grips with the git comands, then you can make use of the helper tools.
At the moment I'm still working with the bash but I occasionally use TortoiseGit for windows explorer integration and Git Source Control Provider for Visual Studio GUI integration.

Git First Impressions

So far, so good :) Took me just under half a day to set up a git repository, import the existing project source and update our CI server. GitHub works well for creating your repositories and walks you through the process. It's very quick, especially when you comapare it to TFS - it's knocked 40% off our build time for a fairly hefty web app. It's not just the speed thats impressive though, having a complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server is something as a TFS slave user, I've been longing for. I still think there's lots to get my head round, which will make things interesting next week when I have some real work to do on this project; so watch this space.

Here are some useful resources if you are just getting to grips with Git:

• Git Homepage
• GitHub - repository managment
• Git for the lazy - nice and concise
• Handy help docs from GitHub - including generating SSH keys so you can upload to GitHub
• A useful Git cheat sheet

Git Bandwagon

I've being feeling the peer pressure of late to try out Git as source code repository for our the app team's projects. Today I'm going to give it a try with one of our bigger web apps. I'm hoping that it won't take me too long to get my head round the way Git works and that it results in the project build time dropping on our CI server. Well it had better - time is money!

Git is an extremely fast, efficient, distributed version control system ideal for the collaborative development of software.

Team Foundation Server Admin for Dummies

Occasionally I'll need to administer my team's users and projects in TFS, which usually results in me having to annoy Jonathan our TFS guru at Esendex and beg him to help me. It's not just me that finds it difficult to administer TFS users and projects though; Microsoft don't make it easy for us developers at all.

Luckily, some nice people over at Attrice Corp have made it easy. Introducting Team Foundation Server Sidekicks, a GUI tool for TFS admin tasks.

You're welcome :)

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Power Tools

I often forget to comment my check-ins and I'm getting fed up with having a big sign stuck to my monitor saying "Comment Your Check-Ins!". So I've decided to make use of Team Foundation Server Power Tools to enforce a custom check-in policy to ensure everyone checks in comments with their changesets.

Team Foundation Server Power Tools is a set of enhancements, tools and command-line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server (TFS) user experience.

Other useful features of the add-on include the ability to enforce a 'testing policy' to ensure tests are run before check-in and an alert editor for enabling subscriptions to events (e.g. failed builds) in Team Foundation Server. A very useful add-on indeed :)