Converting a TFS repository to git in place

Question

We recently upgraded our on-premises TFS server to 2015 and people would like to use git with our existing projects. So I'm looking to convert (not migrate!) an existing team project from TFSVC to git. I've read a lot of articles about migrating to a different team project, but we have a long history of work items, attachments and builds that we'd like to keep. Is there any process or tool that will help us here? Reading through articles on the ALM site (ex https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vs/alm/code/overview) seem to indicate that only migrations to external git repos are possible. 

If this kind of conversion isn't possible, what's the best way to integrate my git users into TFSVC as simply and quickly as possible?

Answer 1

I think the best way to have your git users move toward TFS is to point them to tf.exe and its documentation since they may be command line type of people (guessing).

I don't think converting a TFS project having a long history of change and work items to git is feasible. If the company just converted to TFS, maybe they could start migrating to use TFS in all projects :) Its going to be hard for them, but it doesn't make sense to spend your time pushing back for them by converting a project to git.

Answer 2

Hi Jesse D Porter,

Thank you for posting here.

This link is tell about Migrating a TFVC team project to a Git team project. You could take a reference.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/tfssetup/2015/05/19/migrating-a-tfvc-team-project-to-a-git-team-project-along-with-changeset-history-in-tfs/

In TFS 2015, you can add a repository in TFVC team project.

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Answer 3

Hi Tingting MO,

Thank you for the link. If I'm reading it correctly, we can add many different repos to our existing projects without having to migrate code at all. If that's the case, we can keep our existing tfvc repository for auditing purposes and simply cut things over to git with an initial clone. I'll let you know how it goes.

Jesse

Answer 4

Hi Jesse,

>>we can keep our existing tfvc repository for auditing purposes and simply cut things over to git with an initial clone.

I am not very clear what you mean "cut things over to git ", the tfvc repository and Git Repository are 2 different place in TFS.

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Answer 5

Hello again Tingting MO,

This is a digression, but you've been very helpful with my issue: "Cut over" is a colloquilism. It means to perform a fast switch from one process to a different one done in such a way that the prior process can't be performed after the switch. When we "cut things over to git" I mean that we will be using only git for source code control without the possibility of using TFVC after the switch is made.

Regards,

Jesse

Answer 6

About your new question, it would be better if you open up a new thread for the new question. You could start a discussion thread.

In this way, our discussion here will not deviate too much from the original issue. This will make answer searching in the forum easier and be beneficial to other community members as well.

Thank you for your understanding.

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