What's the best free open source alternative to MS Team Foundation Server? [closed]

Question

I have a team developing software in MS Visual Studio and now they want to start using MS Team Foundation Server, mainly for versioning and maybe patch and bug tracking. They don't have any experience with MS Team Foundation Server, but they are very enthusiastic with MS products. So whats the best free open source alternative solution? Git, SVN, CVS, Bugzilla, plugins, etc.

Grogram

VS + MSDN Sub gets a TFS Server + CAL, so depending on how VS was purchased they may well have TFS already. – Freestanding

All else being equal I'd go for TFS any day.. the integration with VS, issue tracking, and non VS users is quite good. – Haldes

TFS integration with non-VS users is horrendous. If you use any non-Microsoft software (e.g. browser other than IE, OS other than Windows, compiler other than VS) then just forget it. – Woolard

I meant business users =) I would never use TFS in non-Microsoft/.NET/VS projects. – Haldes

Answer 1

There isn't a direct alternative, but I'd rather use the following:

Subversion (TortoiseSVN), CruiseControl, and something like Bugzilla.

Martin Fowler has recently done a good article on source control, and svn comes out ahead of TFS.

Conservancy

Something like Bugzilla might be Trac. Widely used, active development, and extensive subversion integration. trac.edgewall.org – Woolard

Looks interesting, I might have a look at that. Thanks. – Conservancy

Answer 2

There's no single open source alternative to TFS. TFS does source code management and versionning, build server and continuous integration, workitems, project management, sharepoint portal, ... and a good Visual Studio integration.

Ferromagnetic

yes, but it's not a single product under the TFS umbrella, it's more than 1 product – Rebeckarebeka

we managed to build an equivalent stack of functionality using non open source and open source stuff, we used almost all the atlassian stack of software and cruisecontrol .net.. along with nunit , ncover you can get pretty close to the same functionality (I said close not the same) – Chak

Answer 3

Here's a vote for Mercurial (Hg), along with Bugzilla. If you are primarily a Microsoft shop then Mercurial has a much better UI (TortoiseHg), which we use with WinMerge to show visual diffs. We don't find Visual Studio integration to be a big factor in practice, and it's great to be able to operate source control on whole folder trees regardless of the VS solutions and projects contained within them.

Also, if you are planning on a new VCS now, you may as well keep up-to-date and use a DVCS, like Mercurial or git. No one I know who has switched to a DVCS would ever willingly go back to a non-DVCS like TFS or svn. Once you get used to local check-ins you'll agree!

Bourn

Answer 4

If you want to consider a hosted solution, you can try GitHub or BitBucket. If you're using Visual Studio, I'd recommend BitBucket that uses Mercurial as the version control system. There's already a Visual Studio extension for Mercurial called VisualHg, or if you prefer Tortoise-style, you can use TortoiseHg.

GitHub/BitBucket will give you source controk, issue tracking, and project management.

For the build server, you can try CruiseControl or TeamCity (free but not open source).

Beckett

If you want self-hosted soluiton you may use stash+jira. – Chukker

Answer 5

Martin Fowler survey results: http://martinfowler.com/bliki/VcsSurvey.html

Not a good showing for TFS - many users regard it as 'dangerous'. I use TFS because I have to at my current place of work. Prior to this I used SVN + Tortoise + Gemini and had no real complaints.

imho TFS is well integrated with VS but it is somewhat monolithic and occasionally recalcitrant. After all, 'Source Control' = Source + Control...

Lots of coders I know who are not in thrall to the evil M$ empire speak very highly of Git too.

Darryldarryn

That survey is not very representative to say the least.. beats me how VSS could ever come off as better than TFS. – Haldes

As far as I am aware VSS is still has one of the largest user bases of any version control tool (although lord knows why) – Chak

@Haldes - yes, the survey comprises, in Fowler's words 'spurious but mesmerising numbers' and are based on just under a hundred responses. But I trust the guys at ThoughtWorks to know their onions. @Krystan - I wonder if the sheer tedium involved in evaluating, switching to, installing and learning how to configure a CVS (surely in the top 5 most unexciting of all essential software applications) has anything to do with it? – Darryldarryn

I am trying out Git but how do I create a collection (like in TFS) in the server and allow check-in of files/project? – Tighten

Azure DevOps (formerly TFS) is most convenient tool and now widely used after Jira. – Cyrus

Answer 6

Although it is not free but extremely cheap try VisualSVN, it integrates really well within Visual studio but uses SVN as backend

Teeming

ahknsvn is free and integrates svn with Visual Studio. Early versions has some issues, but it now seems to be quite stable. ankhsvn.open.collab.net – Woolard