Visual Studio Online - Git/TFS Topic

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#1

I’ve noticed that most of you appear to use GIT for source control. It’s worth noting that this is not the source control that the majority of corporate America uses, particularly those on the Microsoft stack, which is, regardless of your opinions on the topic, the vast majority of the fortune businesses. As someone who’s been working with both GIT and TFS, in particular using Visual Studio Online (which supports both repo types), I’m wondering if there would be any interest in material on understanding how to work with TFS versus GIT, and perhaps stretching into topics such as using SCRUM/Agile, team boards, backlogs, and all of that project management nonsense us hackers really don’t care about all that much :wink:

You know, a kind of intro to corporate development, because, while it’s true most of us want to make games, these skills are useful for life all over the place, and having some insight into this stuff might come in handy… some day.

–Aaron

#2

Doesn’t TFS use Git under the hood?

Given this is specifically a gamedev community, and an international one at that, the tool demographics might be different to “corporate America”. Do the AAA studios tend to use TFS or a MS toolchain?

#3

That’s actually a really good question, and I don’t know the answer. We used VSS/TFS at Valve (I was the build and release manager for Half-Life), but that’s probably a unique case, as it was founded by two Microsoft veterans. As for the tools, that’s probably pretty spread out across the board, an in most cases I would expect it to be determined by similar legacy. Obviously iD for example uses a *nix toolchain, Valve has likely shifted away as they’re building Linux based products primarily and I don’t think Harrington is there any more. Sony likely uses a blended stack as both competitors and partners with Microsoft. EA, I would guess uses MS stack, and Blizzard is a mystery, but if I had to roll the dice I’d guess MS as well. Complete speculation on almost all of that, of course.

And no, TFS does not use GIT under the hood, it’s spiritual successor is Visual Source Safe, which has been around since the 90s and morphed into TFS and then VSO. GIT and VSS/TFS work very differently from one another.

So, as to your point, and a response, my offer was actually for learning this for NON gaming industry skills, what I was suggesting is that there are more jobs available in the corporate sector where this additional knowledge would be useful. Again, simply a query to see if anyone would like to know about this stuff. Appreciate the feedback! =)

#4

I use TFS/VS at work. While I’m coding Unity I’m using Visual Studio Code and have it as what all my code for C# opens and debugs on.

I have done some research and neither are really good at handling binary files like images/models. Is there a better system for this? TFS is also great for big teams but a monster for smaller teams so that would be a consideration I would put out there for anyone interested in when to choose between the two.

#5

Unfortunately, pretty much any scenario where you’re converting binary data into a database field is going to suck to some extent. I would also be curious to find if there’s a better way, although I will note that this is what SharePoint is for, and you can set up document libraries attached to your project in TFS/VSO, which provides the ability to link work items and backlog items to documents in the library. SharePoint document libraries also support version tracking, so that would be the recommended solution to your particular concern about storing the data in source control.

Now, I will note that I do store binary files in source control as well, such as hotfixes and kernel updates to the software I work with, and finally, note that a sharepoint document library… is also a database table in the end :wink:

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