Recently I’ve been using a lot of Codeplex for my projects as I pick up dev work over the past few weeks. Codeplex is the hosted version of Team Foundation Server that is free for use and hosted by Microsoft. However, what it requires you to do that any project on Codeplex will be marked as publicly accessible after 30-days of creation.
So, let’s get started. First, go to http://www.codeplex.com, the site recently gone through a new UI revamp and looks much sleeker now. Get yourself registered on the site (should take you less than 5 minutes).
Once you are registered, you should be able to create your first project.
Start by creating a new project. The whole project creation wizard is pretty self-explanatory. Basically you give your project a name and you will be assigned a workspace + URL (http://www.codeplex.com/yourproject). You can also select the type of licensing terms that you want to be associated with your project.
After you are done, your project will have it’s project pages created along with TFS setup to host your project files.
In short, you have a section for:
1. Release – Place where you can upload your release files
2. Discussion – A forum where your devs and users can discuss about the bits
3. Issue Tracker – Where people can file bug report and issue can be tracked
4. Source Code – Where you find your TFS login + all the project updates
5. Stats – Check out how popular your project is
6. People – Where you manage the users who have access to your projects (Coordinator – Owner, Developer – They can sign in to your hosted projects in TFS)
7. License – You can modify your project licensing terms here
Since we are doing dev work here, let’s concentrate on the Source Code section. Codeplex supports a couple of Source Control Client:
Also in this section, when you click on Visual Studio Team Explorer tab, you should be able to see your TFS login credentials.
Today, we will concentrate on VSTE (Visual Studio Team Explorer) which can be installed on Visual Studio 2005/2008. You simply have to download the client at (http://www.codeplex.com/CodePlex/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Obtaining%20the%20Team%20Explorer%20Client)
Now, download the plug-in and install it on your existing Visual Studio. After that, just launch VS. You will see a new checkbox at the bottom of the screen.
If you want to add the project to TFS, simply check it. If you are doing this for the first time, you will be asked to add a TFS server.
Just click servers –> Add..
Enter the information you find in the Visual Studio Team Explorer tab of Codeplex.
After you are done, you can select the project folder you want to associate this project to. If you have various Codeplex project associated with your account, you will be using the same login but you can choose them in the project selection pane.
Once this is done, you are all ready to make use of TFS hosted by the Codeplex team where you get version control, issue tracking and many other cool stuff.
Happy Coding!!!!