What's new in Team Explorer Everywhere

Team Explorer Everywhere 2012 contains the following new features and enhancements:

  • New installing experience

  • New look for Team Explorer

  • Local workspace

  • Embedded work item editor

  • Conflict resolution

  • Setting Execute bit on a file

  • Connecting to hosted TFS

  • New command-line features

New installing experience

You can now install the TFS plug-in for Eclipse through an Eclipse update site for Microsoft.

The install process becomes much easier and more convenient:

On the Help menu in Eclipse, choose Install New Software. Then choose Add in the install dialog box. The Add Repository dialog box appears.

Add site

In Name, enter TFS Plugin for Eclipse. In Location, enter http://dl.microsoft.com/eclipse/tfs, and then choose OK.

For more information about the install procedure, see Installing the Team Foundation Server Plug-in for Eclipse.

New look for Team Explorer

The Team Explorer in the TFS plug-in for Eclipse has a new look. Many improvements help to increase performance and provide a richer UI experience.

TEE Home Page

In addition to the Home page, Pending Changes, Work Items, Builds, and Settings also have their own pages.

In the new Pending Changes page, you can get a rich, persistent view of the work you’ve done and use tools to manage and contribute your pending changes.

Pending changes page

For more information, see Manage Pending Changes (Team Explorer Everywhere)

In the new Work Items page, you can boost productivity and track work more easily. Use the My Favorites and Team Favorites section to organize and access your favorite queries.

Team Explorer Everywhere work item page

In the new Builds, you can create, modify, and delete build definitions. You can also see and manage all builds triggered by you. Use the My Favorites and Team Favorites section to organize and access information about the builds that matter most to you and the team.

Team Explorer Everywhere builds page

In the new Settings page, you manage your team project collection and team project version control settings.

Team Explorer Settings Page

Local Workspace

You can work offline easily by using local workspaces to work on version-controlled files.

When you create or edit a workspace, you can specify whether its location is Local or Server. Local is the default option.

Note

Local workspaces are only supported for Team Foundation Server 2012.

In most cases, local is best because it provides several advantages:

  1. You can add, edit, delete, rename, undo, and compare items in your workspace when your network connection is unavailable or unreliable.

  2. To restore locally deleted files, just Get Files from the Server to Your Workspace (Team Explorer Everywhere).

  3. When you add or delete files outside of Eclipse, the program can detect these changes.

Warning

Pending changes of team members who use local workspaces are not visible to other team members in Source Control Explorer.

By default certain types of files (for example, .dll files) are ignored by version control. As a result, when you add ignored files to folders that are mapped in a local workspace, they do not appear in the Pending Changes page in Team Explorer.

You can configure which kinds of files are ignored by placing text file called .tfignore in the folder where you want rules to apply. The effects of the .tfignore file are recursive. However, you can create .tfignore files in sub-folders to override the effects of a .tfignore file in a parent folder.

For more information about .tfignore file, see Add Files to Version Control (Team Explorer Everywhere).

Note

The .tfignore file works only for local workspaces. For server workspaces, you need to use .tpignore file.

Embedded work item editor

You can use an embedded version of the work item editor inside Eclipse IDE instead of opening the editor in an external browser as previously.

Work Item Form

Note

The old work item editor still exists in the product. You can change your default work item editor by going to Window, Preferences, TFS , Work Item Tracking. You can use the new embedded work item editor only when you connect to Team Foundation Server 2012.

Conflict resolution

Your work is interrupted less often by conflicts because Team Explorer Everywhere tries to automatically resolve certain kinds of conflicts.

Resolve conflict

When you must manually resolve a conflict, the Eclipse Merge Tool lets you do so with great ease.

Transparent execute bit support

If you work with Team Explorer Everywhere on UNIX, it’s easier to make files executable under version control. Team Foundation Server 2012 can store the executable attribute with the file that is checked in. You don’t need to add the .tpattributes file in the working folder any more.

The process of setting execute bit becomes much easier:

  1. Create a new file and make it executable in the command-line client.

  2. $ chmod u+x HelloWorld.sh.

  3. Check in the file.

  4. When you try to get the file from the server, the file will be automatically set to executable.

Connecting to hosted TFS

You can connect Eclipse to your team project in hosted TFS once you have a Team Foundation Service account. You’ll need to specify the URL of the hosted TFS in the Add Team Foundation Server dialog box:

Connect to hosted TFS

For more information, see Connecting to Team Foundation Server (Team Explorer Everywhere).

New command-line features

  1. Easier command-line authentication

    The “profile” concept has been removed from Team Explorer Everywhere 2012. You don’t need to set up a connection profile any more when you authenticate yourself to Team Foundation Server. Your username and passwords associated with a server can be saved to the credential cache when you specify them for the first time. You can use system environment variables to save other information that used to be in profiles, such as proxy URL, proxy enabled/disabled, etc.

    For more information, see Command-Line Authentication for Team Explorer Everywhere and Set Environment Variables (Team Explorer Everywhere)

  2. Changes in commands

    1. New commands tf property and tf rollback are added.

    2. tf properties is renamed to tf info.

    3. tf productkey and tf profile are obsolete.

    4. Some options in tf workspace, tf delete, tf add, tf checkin, tf get, tf merge, tf status, and tf unshelve have also changed.

    Note

    For more information about the changes in commands, use the / help option.

See Also

Concepts

Team Foundation Server Plug-in for Eclipse - Beginner's Guide

Cross-Platform Command-Line Client- Beginner's Guide

Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server