TFS 2010 and Mac OS X integration

Question

Reading http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/tfsgeneral/thread/b05ec723-418f-4807-a6c5-656fad9af13a it seems TFS 2010 can be integrated with the Mac OS environment.  We have some developers developing iPhone apps and are using Mac computers.  We use mainly PC desktops and VS 2010 internally.  We have never connected external to apple OS's.  It seems like they down Team Explorer Everywhere, now where would they download the Mac version of this application to run on their Mac computers?

 

Answer 1

You would perform the following steps:

 

1. Download and install Eclipse from Eclipse.org.  You can pick any version or just go for the Platform Runtime Binary which is a simple Eclipse shell with no programming language features etc.  The Mac/Cocoa version is the best one to go for.  Once you have downloaded Eclipse and extracted it you can move it to a suitable location to install (for example /Applications/Eclipse).  
2. Then open the Eclipse application inside the folder.  You will be prompted for an Eclipse workspace.  If you are only using Eclipse as a TFS client then you can keep with the default and check the "Use this as default and do not ask again" checkbox
3. Next download the TFS Plug-in for Eclipse from Microsoft (TFSEclipsePlugin-UpdateSiteArchive-10.1.0.zip).  You can get the update site archive here for the latest release (Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 SP1).  Do not extract this file.
4. Follow the installation instructions to install the plug-in into Eclipse.  Basically you go to Help, Install New Software..., Add, Archive, Select the zip file downloaded previously (TFSEclipsePlugin-UpdateSiteArchive-10.1.0.zip)
5. Press OK.  Check the Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 box, uncheck the "Contact all update sites during install to find required software" option as you have everything you need and this will save you time.  Press Next, Next, Accept the terms if you agree with them, Finish
6. Restart Eclipse when prompted
7. Go to Window, Close All Perspectives then Window, Open Perspective, Other...  Select Team Foundation Server Exploring.
8. Finally - in the Team Explorer view you can press the little "+" button to start a connection with TFS.

Next time you open Eclipse for this workspace, your connection will be remembered.

Let me know how you get on.

Martin.

 

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http://www.woodwardweb.com

Answer 2

Does the above plug-in work with Cocoa as well ?

Answer 3

Cheers Martin, that worked like a charm!

Now the question is what would be the use case of interacting with the IDE (e.g. Xcode or MonoDevelop) in Mac in terms of checking files out and in? At the moment it appears that you have to check out the whole project (or just the files that you will work with if you know in advance) in Eclipse first, then make changes in your IDE and finally check in the whole project in Eclipse. Is there a better use case that I'm missing?

Answer 4

This will work with any set of files. Not sure what you mean by Cocoa but it will work with Xcode.

Answer 5

Is there an alternative to Eclipse that works with TFS as well? I really have some bad experiences with Eclipse. 

Answer 6

You can use the command line (tf).  However it's worth looking at Eclipse above if you want a UI.  If you use the Platform Runtime Binary you are not running any of the programming tooling, you are just using the Eclipse shell which runs pretty well in the latest versions on the latest versions of OS X.  Earlier versions of Eclipse were coded against Carbon which is why you might have run into issues.  It's all Cocoa now.

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http://www.woodwardweb.com

Answer 7

Thanks Martin. I followed your steps, I could connect to TFS from eclipse.