Working on multiple projects but don’t have a good way of managing the projects then you are in danger. How you manage your source code? How you collaborate and work in teams? I have been working from home and have been in constant touch with my team members and therefore we need to come up with a solution where we can have our source code controlled properly. We do have many options like Git, TFS Express or VSS or may be another source control software. But we are working from our homes and we don’t have a server with a public static IP where we can set up our source control. I was given a job to explore all the possible options on how we can manage the source code.
Well, I get to it and found out the most suitable options we can use. Here is the list of online services anyone can use totally free of charge.
This is the best thing as a .NET developer I have ever come across. TFS is available as a cloud service and you can use it for free. My first reaction was: How is that possible? TFS is one of the most expensive software in the whole .NET ecosystem as far as I know. The TFS cloud service is awesome and is known as stripped version of the main TFS. But there are still many features that I believe we are ever going to use. Majority of my team members are concerned with check-ins and check-outs. They don’t care about anything else but on the other hand I do. So I went on exploring and trust me it is awesome. Moreover to my surprise, this online service also have Git integration. That means if you are not familiar with TFS or if you plan to use some other IDE like Eclipse then this is the option for you. And yes, TFS does supports Eclipse. Try it out today as this is one of the most reliable service ever offered to you and that too for free. For the free account a total of 5 users can connect to the service and work concurrently in the same projects. Here is the complete list of features that is offered for the free service:
- Up to 5 users
- Unlimited number of projects
- Version control (TFVC or Git)
- Work item tracking
- Agile planning tools
- Feedback management
- Build (still in preview)
- Test management (still in preview)
Microsoft announced that they will announce their additional plans and services in 2013. Make sure that you are well versed of the date as there could be changes to the service.
GitHub needs no introduction. One of the largest source code hosting site/company. GitHub is awesome and it’s desktop client for Windows is much better. But why we didn’t went for GitHub? Clearly, the service is good but sadly they offers only public repositories for open-source projects for free account holders. To have private repositories you need to shred some money from your pocket. We can afford that too for a limited time period. My team members don’t want to learn Git commands or even want to try VS extension for Git integration in Visual Studio. So we let it go. For open-source projects you should use GitHub as a huge community behind it will make your project more awesome.
Another great online service which we can rely on. Excellent service and has an option to choose between public and private repositories. On the other hand GitHub only offers public repos for the free account. Although, BitBucket is promising but none of my team members were interested in using Git. If you want private repositories with no TFS then you should go for BitBucket.
Support TFS and Mercurial but only supports open-source projects no private projects. Again for open-source projects CodePlex is good.
Bottom Line
The team sticks with TFS online but on the other hand as usual I am curious to know more about these services. I personally use all the above services. GitHub and CodePlex for open-source projects and TFS for my personal projects. One more thing, if you guys are really interested in using or trying TFS and want to explore more about it then download the stripped version of TFS 2012 know as TFS 2012 Express for free and set it up in your office or home network. I strongly recommend that you should make multiple backup sets of your source code and use online source control services along with SkyDrive and DropBox storage to be on a safer side.