Accessing TFS 2010 From Visual Studio 2008 & 2005 (IDE)
(Updated to include VS 2005)
You can most definitely access TFS 2010 from the Team Explorer within VS ‘08 and ‘05 BUT there is a very defined installation order and a final update patch to make it all work. So, below is a description of the installation order of all of the pieces needed to be in place before VS ‘08 can get to a TFS 2010 environment.
You must install the components in the following order. If you do not, then it most likely will not work – meaning you won’t be able to attach to a TFS Server. If you do install the components in a different order that does not mean you cannot recover without uninstalling (yea!). All it means is that, at the end of the day, the components will need to be “layered” as defined below.
Visual Studio 2008
- Visual Studio 2008
- TFS Team Explorer 2008
- Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (installer only) (ISO – Full download)
- Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 (nice concise naming…NOT!)
Visual Studio 2005
- Visual Studio 2005
- TFS Team Explorer 2005
- Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1
- Visual Studio Team System 2005 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 (Installer)
So, if, for example, you install VS and then VS SP1 and then Team Explorer you won’t be able to just add the Forward Compatibility Update and have things work. You will need to re-install VS SP1 so that it is on top of Team Explorer and then the Forward Compatibility Update. At that point the pieces will be layered in the right order. Kind of a pain, but that’s how it works.
The description below should be used for 2005 and 2008:
Once the install is done you can add your server and this is how you used to add a server in Team Explorer ‘08 and still is if you are attaching to TFS ‘08:
Server name, port and protocol and you are done.
TFS 2010 is different because of the concept of project collections. You need to add the virtual directory and the collection name in addition to the server, port and protocol. In Team Explorer 2010 you get this dialog box:
which allows you to add everything separately – except for the collection which is done later:
In TE ‘08 you add all of the details in the server name text box as a URL including the name of the collection since there isn’t any place else to add it.
When you hit OK it will churn for a couple seconds and then should display the new connection in the remaining dialog box:
That should be it. You should have access to the TFS project collection.
I definitely ran into the layering issue and figured it out with some research along with trial and error. Hopefully, this helps.
Tags: MSDN, Team Foundation Server, TFS, Visual Studio
