Using source control

Microsoft Team Foundation source control provides source-code version control functionality, which can scale to handle thousands of developers.

What is source control?

Source control is a system that helps manage source files that are shared by a team. By using source control, many people can work on the same set of files while minimizing the risk that one person might inadvertently delete the changes that someone else made to a file.

How does source control work?

Source files are stored in a source control system repository (a Team Foundation server ). Team members check files out to working folders on their computer, make changes to the files, and check them back in. When a file is checked back in to the repository, the source control system makes a record of the change between the new version and the previous version. When checking in a file, the team member adds a notation to the file's record in the repository so that others can see what changes were made to the file. That way, if someone makes an unwanted change to a file, you can revert the file to an earlier state.

For more information, see Checking files in and out.

A file can be checked out by more than one person at a time. After the first person checks the file back in, subsequent check-ins will go through a merging process to resolve any conflicts. For more information, see Using Team Explorer  and Working with Team Foundation Version Control  on MSDN.

Team Foundation support in Expression Web

Team Foundation source control is integrated into Microsoft Expression Web so that you can perform tasks such as viewing files, checking files in, adding files, and viewing file history, all from the Folders List panel in Expression Web.

See also

Tasks

Adding files to source control

Concepts

Source control best practices
Setting up source control on your computer

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