Question

I need to checkout and manage a project from TFS (Team Foundation Server) and was wondering if there is an easy way to do this.

I usually use SVN, but for this particular project, TFS is a requirement.

The best way I’ve found so far with a bit of Googling is at http://marceloverdijk.blogspot.com/2009/01/grails-netbeans-and-microsoft-team.html

Answer 1

Short answer, no I don’t think there is any easy way to integrate the Netbeans IDE and TFS. However there are some options.

Firstly you could use the SVN bridge this allows subversion clients to connect to TFS. If that is viable then you should be good to go. Here are a couple of blog posts that you may find useful when using TFS if you have a SVN background. SVN to TFS. If SVN Bridge doesn’t meet your needs then there are other ways to use TFS but none of them are integrated in to the Netbeans IDE.

If you’re developing on Windows then you can install Team Explorer (Use the version that matches the version of TFS you’re using e.g. if you’re connecting to TFS 2010 then install Team Explorer 2010), this will install a Visual Studio Shell and the Team Explorer plugin. Along side that it will install the “tf” command line utility, you then have a choice of using either a GUI with the VS plugin, or the command line.

You should also install the TFS power tools, they add some usefull functionality such as extra command line tools (using the “tfpt” command) they will also install windows explorer integration, this will allow you to do some basic Source Control functions from the Right Click menu in windows explorer (Check out, check in, diff etc)

You should also look at Team Explorer Everywhere, I don’t think it does Netbeans integration but it does do Eclipse. If you’re developing on an OS other than Windows then this is your only option.

To use any on these tools you must have a TFS CAL to be licenced properly. If you have an MSDN licence that will probably include a CAL, if not then someone needs to spend some cash and buy one :-).