Can you install a standalone TFS client that doesn't need Visual Studio?

Question

Is it possible to get a standalone TFS client on a server that does NOT have Visual Studio installed? We\'d like a way to \"reach into\" a TFS project from a server, without ha

Answer 1

Team Explorer 2008 will allow you to connect to TFS, but it will install a Visual Studio shell.

Team Explorer Everywhere has Web access. Martin Woodward wrote a great article about it.

Answer 2

You can install Team Explorer (on the TFS install DVD, or you can download it from MSDN) without needing to have VS2010 installed - Team Explorer will install a 'shell' VS2010 with only the TFS features available - none of the IDE components.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=fe4f9904-0480-4c9d-a264-02fedd78ab38

Answer 3

Included with Team Foundation Server there is a free web front end called "TFS Web Access". In TFS 2008, the Web Access was a different installation and it came as a Power Tool to the TFS. In TFS 2010, the Web Access is installed automatically and is part of the TFS.

In order to get to the Web Access in TFS 2010 do the following:

In your preferred browser type:

http://[YourServerName]:8080/tfs/web/

YourServerName is the tfs name for example: http://tfs-srv:8080/tfs/web/

Also, if you need Agile planning and a Task Board with TFS Web Access, take a look at Urban Turtle - http://urbanturtle.com. According to Microsoft, this is the premier Scrum tooling for TFS.

Discloser: I work with the Urban Turtle team. So do not take my words. Instead, read what Microsoft blogs said about Urban Turtle. http://blogs.msdn.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=urban%20turtle&sections=3652.

Answer 4

Download the TFS power tools. The "Windows Shell Extension" component allows one to perform most operations with TFS via Windows Explorer. Note that the Power Tools installer states that Visual Studio 2010 (or Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010) is a prerequisite for the following features:

• Command-line interface
• Visual Studio Integration
• Check-in Policy Pack
• Process Editor
• Windows Shell Extension
• PowerShell Cmdlets

Answer 5

There now seems to be a more generic Team Explorer Everywhere for TFS - perhaps that will give us non-VS users desktop access to TFS :)

It includes an Eclipse plug-in and usefully, a command line client.

Answer 6

While it appears to be a dead project. If you like having version control outside an IDE (or independant of the IDE). There is SVN Bridge, which allows you to use TortoiseSVN to talk to your TFS server.

https://svnbridge.codeplex.com/