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Hey folks - just looking to bounce some ideas around about this - any feedback welcomed!

Scenario as follows:

1. My company has lots of web SITEs deployed
2. We are trying to integrate team foundation server (TFS) - version 2010 in our case - but will soon be upgrading (especially if it solves this upcoming issue i'm facing)
3. I'm struggling to follow the workflow on checking in web sites vs. web apps - don't see how web sites can be source controlled when the site files sit on a remote web server

Let me explain...web sites are the older way of creating .NET web applications and deploying them. Web sites are the more modern way of packaging and deploying a web application in .NET. I can clearly see the workflow for the web APP check in and deployment when using TFS in your workflow.
It seems very similar to check ins and deployments with winforms, console apps, etc. - no sweat.

With a web site project, you generally don't end up with centralized .sln or .proj files. Thus if you check in a web site from the server via visual studio and you open it again later - there is no "binding" to TFS essentially. You would have to have a local .sln file (perhaps it could be right with the web site, I'm not sure if that's a best practice though) to ensure if you open it, it is TFS "aware". But if another developer opens the same web site on the server, they won't get the same warnings, etc.

Finding this to be a real problem when trying to move from a "no source control" to a "source control" shop.

1. Wondering if I'm missing something awesome in TFS (either 2010 or the newer versions) that would help with this - for instance...was wondering if the git option in VS online would be helpful - i.e. check in the web site files right from the server this way.

2. Wondering if i need to convert all these web sites to web apps and if that is the only clear way to fix this issue...or perhaps i just copy all the web site files to the development machine in each case and use the "copy web site" for deployment...would have to put .sln files right with the web site files to do this though (as i mention in the text earlier here).

3. Had considered not using TFS for these web sites and just using SVN to source control the web site files with something like tortoiseSVN as a client (which i'm certain would work great but not achieve the TFS-first objective).

4. And finally...had read about SVN plugins for TFS, but unsure if that will just complicate things vs. just having VisualSVN doing point #3 right above.
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Valery Possoz 3-Sep-14 14:40pm    
Hi,
I think you might take it the wrong way round.
What I would do for an existing site is
1)In visual studio create a TFS workspace, copy locally (ie in the workspace) the site files add them to TFS, check in.
2)work with the tfs version of the site, check in, check out, get latest etc... (the other developers have access to the same tfs copy)
3)once your are happy publish the site.
Seems fairly straight forward, you never work on the publish (deployed) site directly.
jchoponis 5-Sep-14 11:44am    
Ah all good points. Thank you.

I'm thinking in this case you have the .SLN file stored right with the site - or the .vsscs stuff won't work correctly.

i.e. if i change our developers workflow to match what you describe, i need to be sure they aren't going to file > open website and then opening the workspace copy of the site that way - if they do, and there's no .sln file, etc. - they won't have source control features.
jchoponis 30-Sep-14 22:44pm    
Found out some more about this.

Honestly, the TFS way for working with "web sites" seems terrible. You must store the .sln file with the web site files and use that to open the web site project - and NOT use the "open web site" option for opening your project.

If you don't use the sln file, your files will not be properly source controlled.

Found you also should create the sln file before adding the project to TFS as a source controlled project. If you try to add the sln later to wrap things up, only part of the project will be source controlled.

This was my experience with TFS 2010 & VS 2013/VS 2010.

I'm seriously considering doing something else like SVN for web site projects...

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