Connecting to TFS on a Mac

For over 10 years now, I have worked on a Mac with a .net back end. Depending on the tech teams setup, there are several ways to connect to TFS (Team foundation Server)

method 1

use parallels, with windows installed, mapped to a shared folder

install a visual studio shell (isolated)

for windows8 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30670

for windows7 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1366

method 2

use eclipse (use locally). The advantage to this method is you are working in the MacOS environment locally, although the Eclipse Juno interface seems very foreign.

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.2.1-201209141800/eclipse-SDK-4.2.1-macosx-cocoa-x86_64.tar.gz

with this plugin  from Microsoft:

Team Explorer Everywhere for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 with Update

This is the release of the Eclipse plug-in and the cross-platform, command-line client for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, and the Team Foundation Service Preview.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30661

once installed and a workplace is set up, when you launch the app you should get a view where you need to “Connect to TFS”. This will bring up a login overlay.

eclipse juno login

 if login is successful you will get a list of projects you can connect to on the server…

Eclipse-screen-3

click “Finish” and you will get a directory view of the project on TFS. The first time you will see that it is not mapped to a local directory.

Click the “Not Mapped” link and direct to where (on your local hard drive) you want to save a mapped copy of the project. Note: I never work on this mapped copy directly. The mapped project is, after all a .net project with MVC structure. I work on a local copy where the structure for my assets mirrors where i checkin files.

Eclipse-screen-4

you will be prompted to create a workspace

Eclipse-screen-5

The first time you map the project you will be downloading the entire project to your local drive. Most of the structure you may never open, but understanding the structure of MVC is a great advantage, and there are times when you will need to go into the “views” and adjust the “html” portion.

I have 2 folders within the structure where I checkin and out files.

  1.  _assets has the css (compiled SCSS), img (image assets), js, web fonts
  2. html has the html structure i work with locally

You can now “Control” click and checkout files.

Eclipse-screen

Once you are comfortable with the process , there are indepth tutorials on the IDE and YouTube instructions