Microsoft recently announced the availability of Team Explorer Everywhere update 1 with simplified chinese language pack and support for public workspaces which enables multiple users to share the same workspace on other operating systems such as unix. With the help of update 1, developers will be able to edit and check-in files all from a single public workspace.
Even though team explorer everywhere includes branch and merge support, Microsoft has added support for baseless merges. The recent update enables developers to easily copy and paste links to shelvesets around, which is useful if you are sending a reference to a shelveset to your team for a code review. It also works seamlessly over cross platform with different e-mail clients or tools.
InfoQ contacted Microsoft official spokesperson to clarify few doubts regarding the release of Team Explorer Everywhere update 1.
InfoQ: We understood that Team Explorer Everywhere Update 1 is a plug-in for Eclipse. So is it necessary to install Eclipse?
You are correct that this is a plug-in for Eclipse, and thus, you use it from within Eclipse. Put simply, Team Explorer Everywhere is a cross-platform client, enabling developers using tools and platforms other than Visual Studio on Windows to use Team Foundation Server or Team Foundation Service.The confusion is created by the fact that Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Team Foundation Service (TFService) are now called Visual Studio Team Foundation Server / Service - "Visual Studio" has been added at the beginning of the name.
At this point it light also be worthwhile to mention a related item - git-TF - a set of cross-platform, command line tools that facilitate sharing of changes between TFS and a Git repository that Brian wrote about a few months ago.
In the end, what Microsoft is trying to do is enable developers to more efficiently and productive use whatever tools they want and like, integrated with one-another in whatever manner works best for them. So now if someone wants to develop in Java using Eclipse, use Git as their code repository, and manage it all through TFS, they can do so.
InfoQ: We understood that Team Explorer Everywhere Update 1 is for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012. Is it necessary to install Visual Studio 2012 to work with the update?
I can see how this would be a bit confusing as well, for a couple reasons - let me try to clarify. Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012, which are two separate products, each received an update – titled Update 1 - last month.No, it is not necessary to install Visual Studio 2012 (which runs locally on a developer's machine) to use Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 and its update (which runs on a server).
However, they are designed to work very nicely together. Put more simply, a team can very productively use TFS (including Update 1) without using VS - as in the above scenario, using Team Explorer Everywhere and Eclipse - but the two are built to work together.