Question

I am looking for a simple way to collaborate between a team of programmers developing with C# ASP.NET using Visual Studio 2010. I currently use TFS at my other job, and its easy enough so I can download the current files and check them out or check them in etc. Is there a free tool out there that provides the same functionality or are there easy methods out there to have a team of developers work on the same set of code easily without having to buy TFS?

Answer 1

There are lots of different source control systems available. I don’t believe any one of them is as much of a “one stop shop” as TFS in terms of its other offerings (tracking work items, document sharing, automated deployments, etc.) but some of them are considered to be much more of a “best of breed” option for just source control when compared with TFS.

Many people use TFS because of this “one stop shop” mentality where everything is integrated into one complete package. Many others prefer to string together various best of breed tools to customize their own approach. For example, we use TFS at my current job, but at a previous job we used a combination of SVN (for source control), TeamCity (for continuous integration), Rake scripts (for builds/deployments) and Rally (for work item tracking).

If I were to recommend a source control solution right now, I’d be torn between Git (with GitHub being an option) and SVN depending on your needs. You might also want to look into Mercurial with the possibility of evolving into using Kiln as the team grows and matures and looks for a commercial tool.