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Using Version Control

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Whether you are building software at a large company or with a few friends in your garage, on a good day you are able to focus all your energy on researching, designing, coding, testing, and building your app. You probably give little thought to your version control system. Team Foundation version control is designed to simply and quietly as possible do just what you need it to do, which in most cases is to take good care of your code.

You should also make sure to take advantage of the benefits of working in a shared, version-controlled file system. You can improve your personal productivity and recover from difficult problems. You can also use the system to improve collaboration and transparency.

What do you want to do?

  • Learn what’s new in version control
    Use local workspaces to improve performance, My Work to reduce the impact of interruptions, code reviews to increase code quality, and more….

  • Set up your dev machine and get started
    Spend a few minutes to set up your dev machine to take advantage of all the benefits of a version-controlled codebase.

  • Develop your app in a version-controlled codebase
    You don’t have to think about version control in most situations. The system supports you when you need to manage and understand your changes.

  • Suspend your work
    Sometimes you need to set aside some or all of the work you are doing. Your version control system can take away some of the pain and reduce the time wasted by interruptions.

  • Contribute your work to the team
    Check in your changes so your team can build upon, test, and release the value you’ve created.

  • Isolate risk
    Use branches and locks to isolate risk introduced by work done by different teams.

  • View and Manage Past Versions
    One advantage of a version control system is that you can look back in time to get detailed information about what changes have been made to your files.

  • Compare Folders and Files
    You can compare server folders and local folders to each other, and view the differences between the contents of each folder.

  • Resolve File Conflicts
    A big advantage of using version control is that several people can work concurrently on a file. One drawback is that sometimes you must resolve conflicts. Although it can be frustrating to encounter conflicts, the system provides information and tools to help you understand resolve conflicts.

  • Work with Version Control Locks
    When you need to prevent a file or folder from being checked out and altered, you can apply a lock.

We are not currently republishing the following sections. However, you can read the Visual Studio 2010 version of this guidance.

Administering Team Foundation Version Control