What advantages does TFS 2010 have over Axosoft OnTime?

Question

I am currently creating a business case for rolling out TFS 2010 as our source control and bug/release management tool.

We currently use OnTime for our bug tracking software and subversion for our SCM.

I was wondering what advantages TFS 2010 has over OnTime?

I have done some thinking so far and would love to hear responses:

• TFS 2010 allows linking changesets->work items->builds
• TFS 2010 provides greater customisation of workflow than OnTime
• TFS 2010 is integrated into the Visual Studio IDE - This requires less apps to be open and less window flicking

Thanks in advance.

Missile

Do you mean Axosoft OnTime? axosoft.com/ontime – Darindaring

Check out OnTimes new version 10. In our company we will probably upgrade to it next week. – Cann

Answer 1

Firstly, I would suggest to consider what is your primary concern, what is the problem that you are tying to solve by rolling out TFS.

In terms of version control I would recommend the blog post from Martin Fowler on Version Control Tools and a follow up results of a version control systems survey. Admittedly this might be and is a subjective view of the subject but one that seems to be pretty popular. TFS clearly looses in comparison to other Version Control Systems.

I currently work with TFS2008 and we have migrated from SourceSafe and IBM ClearCase/ClearQuest and there is no doubt that TFS is far better then any of the previous tool, still it has its serious shortcomings and the new version will only partially address those.

Addressing the individual point you have raised:

• TFS allows to link builds with changesets and work items, but so many other systems
• I have not used OnTime but the workflow customisation can be both an advantage and a hindrance. Potentially, there might be a lot of work involved in creating a custom process template and you would still need a sensible UI on top of it (Team Explorer or Web Access might not be sufficient)
• Integration with Visual Studio is an advantage but there are add-ons to Visual Studio that allow integration with other source control providers

On the advantages of TFS I would probably mention

• Distributed builds and separate build agents - if you do many builds
• Full integration with Visual Studio via the Team Explorer
• Extensive reporting infrastructure (though you can only take full advantage of it when using MSTest for all the testing)
• SharePoint collaboration site for each project

Given the substantial cost of rolling out full TFS installation I would really consider what real business benefit would this solution give you that others don't.

Fogbound

I have read the survey and was a bit surprised about the results. Please consider that in most MS shops SourceSafe was the de facto standard and they are switching to TFS. Many of these people struggle with the concepts of "lockless editing", "merge", etc, not TFS itself. They would downgrade any other system, e.g. they would struggle with subversion as well, probably even more so. Conceptually, the version control part of TFS is easy to grasp if you have worked with Subversion - they are almost identical, with TFS having some handy features, like shelving, decent VS integration etc. – Palmy

Answer 2

TFS is one of the least intuitive Version Control systems I have ever had the misfortune to have to use. It may have numerous "bullet point" advantages over OnTime (and other comparable systems), in terms of raw feature-lists and capabilities, but the key factor is whether it can fit in with your working processes.

My experience with TFS is that you will be required to adapt to the TFS way of working, because adapting TFS to your way of working will be impossible or too difficult to justify.

We recently reviewed a number of possible alternatives to replace a system comprising SVN and a manual bug-tracking system (Excel spreadsheets). On-Time was evaluated but deemed too expensive and complex.

In the end we opted to continue using SVN, but drastically revised (simplified) our repository structures and chose to combine SVN with the FogBugz issue tracking system. The integration between these two systems was fairly rudimentary "out-of-the-box", but required only a little effort on our part to achieve the much closer level of integration we desired. Certainly far LESS effort than my previous experience of a TFS roll-out involved.

Our SVN/FogBugz system is also now integrated with a FinalBuilder build automation suite.

The result is a system that not only fits our working practices perfectly (since we devised the means by which the systems would integrate to achieve that) but which is also infinitely adaptable as our working practices evolve.

Caseose

Thanks for you insights into SVN/Fogbugz/Finalbuilder as an alternative. :) – Missile

"y experience with TFS is that you will be required to adapt to the TFS way of working, because adapting TFS to your way of working will be impossible or too difficult to justify." Which is exactly the same with SVN. – Kieger

Seconded. I've been working with the CI parts of TFS for several weeks now trying to make a decent build and, by god, it is horrible! 95% of the time is spent playing "guess the XML tag" in TFSBuild.proj and the rest trying to make sense of the buildlog. Stay away. – Chlori

@John - SVN is just a VCS, it doesn't have a workflow, it doesn't have a bug tracking system and it doesn't have a build manager, so by definition it cannot impose it's way of working with those things on you. TFS does, and whilst it offers some customisation of those areas, trying to adapt it to working practices even slightly different from those that TFS is built to expect "out of the box" is to enter a world of pain. – Caseose

Answer 3

I think that it really depends on the size of your team(s), and what you want out of source control.

I used bugzilla in combination with Perforce for a couple of years and found that both were really very good at their own individual things while working in a very small team (2-3 people), but the suffered from a lack of integration between them and from some little idiosyncrasies that took time to get used to.

I recently moved to a new job where TFS is used extensively. There are 4 main teams in this company with 10-12 developers in each, split into further project teams below that level, and it is in this kind of environment that TFS really shines imo. It's biggest advantages in my view are:

1) The integration with Visual Studio - it's not just a case of having less windows open, but it really does speed things up and make your life easier. Things like VS automatically checking out files for you as you work (no issues with accidental checkouts due to lockless editing), being able to synronise local + TFs builds, being able to quickly compare the local version against previous ones..yes you can get 3rd party plugins to integrate but none to this level and with the same stability.

2) The communication features - simple things like integraton with Live Messenger (provided you configure TFS correctly) are great for large teams. We use WLM to communicate accross the office and for collaboration as its just quicker than walking over to someone else every time you need to ask a quick question.

3) Linking builds/changelists to tasks - Yes other SCMs do this but again it's just done in a very nice, integrated fashion..I guess it's nothing special to TFS but personally I like how it tracks this.

4) Ease of merging/lockless editing. I've had experience with some other merge tools and the TFS one works nicely enough, making merging after concurrent editing pretty simple. It's very similar to perforce in this respect, but also with a usually pretty effective auto-merge tool which I use for tiny edits that I know cannot cause any potential issues with edits other developers are working on.

5) Auto building/build management. Working with a couple of large solutions containing 20-30 projects that depend on each other, this is a godsend. We have it set to queue up a build every 20 minutes IF something has changed, and when one has happened its listed in the history log..so easy to see when you need to update your local libraries.

I don't have any experience with configuring it other than build management, but I have heard that this is the worst part of TFS..that its a bit of a pain to get everything running correctly.

So, translating that to a business case..I'd say that if you are a Microsoft software house with large/multiple teams, then the time savings and productivity improvements that you will see as a result of the above features are worth the investment in setting it up. Its free to use in most cases as you will probably have a MSDN subscription (maybe some CAL issues but i'm not sure) so your biggest cost will be in user training and configuration.

Billyebilobate

Answer 4

Not shure about TFS, but the UI of OnTime is kind of non intuitive. Also I dont like that you have different fields for Bugs and Tasks. Of course you can always add your own fields, but the default layout should be ready to use.

We endet up using only "Bugs" even if it is a task.

I dont say its a bad product, but if TFS has a better UI for bugtracking now (which it hadnt 4years ago when I had to use it and hated it ), then this would be an argument for TFS.

Sorry to hear that you want to get rid of SVN. Thats a hard decision.

Sideline

Thanks @Malcolm, I we only used Bugs too, just to have everything together. – Missile

Answer 5

I'm not sure about the licensing for the Axios OnTime but if you have an MSDN subscription then it's no additional cost. See the blog post here

I've been using TFS 2008 only for version control and while it's a nice upgrade from VSS some things that we're tyring to do aren't exactly in line with what is expected. That said, I've written a quick little web app that fills in those gaps. It was pretty easy to develop against using the API and there's lots of addons to help with specific tasks.

Colt

Answer 6

Probably not the answer you want to hear, but I'd be doing my damnedest to make a business case against TFS.

In any event, my general advice would be to try it out yourself (or in a small team) on some very small, but real project - maybe some tool you need on a once-off basis, code that can be thrown away or easily migrated to another system because it's small. There's nothing like actually using the system!

I have used OnTime and Subversion. I have not used TFS as bug tracker, but I've used it for source control. The source control part of it is basically still the bad old Visual SourceSafe. If you are currently using Subversion you will be swearing your head off any time you need to rename a file or, heaven forbid, delete a file and then create one with the same name - never mind any branching or merging. It's hard to convey in a post just how primitive and fragile it is as a source control system - that's why you really have to use it. You'll see what I mean when you find yourself stuck with a file you can neither check in nor delete and some meaningless error. Not that Subversion is perfect - but it's a decade ahead of VSS!

The workflow part of TFS, which I've only briefly played with, seems very "heavy" to me. That is, it really restricts the user to that workflow and requires a lot of steps that are often unnecessary. This stuff can help, but it can also just as easily get in the way. A good system provides the workflow when it's needed, but allows you to bypass it when it would just get in the way. When we used OnTime, we found that even its relatively unobtrusive workflow was often just more trouble than it was worth. Of course, this all depends on the specifics of your situation. How are you using OnTime workflows now and what do you want out of TFS that OnTime doesn't provide?

Linking changesets to bugs can be done with Subversion as well. It supports some extensibility mechanism - I don't remember the details, but FogBugz uses it (we switched to it after OnTime). Linking the to builds can be done by adding a simple svn tag command to your build script. Visual Studio integration can be done with VisualSVN.

The cost is also a huge downside of TFS. It is very expensive for what it does, especially when you take into account how well it does it. Yes, it's "free" if you have to have an MSDN subscription for every developer anyway - but do you have to, without TFS? Subversion is free, full stop. OnTime and FogBugz are far more reasonably priced.

Earldom

I have found it easy to make a business case for TFS over SVN (we are currently using SVN), it is certainly not "still the bad old Visual SourceSafe." TFS is much more than an SCM. I would like to compare TFS with OnTime. – Missile

TFS and SVN have a very very similar source control model. Far more similar than TFS & VSS, or SVN & CVS for that matter, despite the history of each project. The main differences are (1) SVN doesn't support true renames (2) SVN's merge tracking is somewhat less mature [though rapidly improving] (3) SVN has much better offline support. – Pistachio

Answer 7

I would strongly recommend against TFS. I once tried to restore the source code from a crashed instance, but I gave up after a few days, so source code was lost (= it failed to do the one thing a VCS should do). Of course, I might have done something wrong, but it's not easy to get everything right when the restore guide is two miles long, and it really is something that should happen so rarely that nobody is experienced with it.

Now I use Subversion/Trac, which gets the job done (and customizing the workflow in Trac is so easy it's not fun, compared to TFS).

Entomostracan

Answer 8

For the time being, avoid TFS!

I would stick with SVN + FinalBuilder and then choose between FogBugz or CounterSoft Gemini.

Adolpho