R – SharePoint Development in VM and Version Control With TFS

development-environmentsharepointtfsversion control

Our team is going to be developing against SharePoint using local VMs. Our VMs are not allowed to join the host domain. Additionally our host nics are prohibited from using Internet Connection Sharing. We have a requirement to source control all our development work using Team Foundation Server. Our TFS installation is using Kerebos for authentication.

To be able to use TFS for source control we were thinking we could share a folder between the host and VM, do our work on the VM, save to the shared folder and then do check ins and such from the host which will be able to authenticate against TFS.

I'm hoping there is a cleaner way to do this or someone with similar restrictions can provide some insight.

Note: I have successfully setup a similar mechanism using Tortoise SVN and Ankh SVN that works, but management will not budge on the TFS requirement. Not that I blame them either, the license is very expensive and they want to feel they are getting their money's worth. Therefore TFS has to be included in the answer.

Best Answer

I think your solutions is as clean as it will get.. you could map a folder on your host machine and open the Visual Studio project straight from there within the VM. Saves copying. Committing will have to be from the host. Use of TFS features will be a bit awkward, you'll have to open VS on your host machine as well to connect commits to work items etc. Not exactly what the investment in TFS was for. How come they've dished out the cash for TFS but are not willing to facilitate it? The VM's should really be in the domain.. or at least a trusted domain.

We run the same setup except we do have SVN and can commit directly from the VM. Workable :)

BTW, if you develop for SharePoint 2010 this gets better; it'll allow installation on non-server OS's so you can develop on your local machine (which I guess, is on the domain).