We are currently using TFS for our software development projects. The developers can check-out/check-in code in Visual Studio, and the testers can create work items in the web interface. This is working like a charm. However, now we would like to expand our usage. We have a project that consists of a lot of binary files from other applications. We'd like to have version control around these, including check-out/check-in. We need people who don't use Visual Studio to have check-out/check-in capability. What are the best options for this?
Here are the options I'm aware of, and a bit of discussion around each:
- TFS web interface (http://server:port/tfs...) - would be great if it supported check-out/check-in, but it doesn't.
- "Team Explorer" - this would work, and is free, but it feels like overkill in our case. I really don't want to have to 1) install it on all user machines, nor 2) train all the users how to use it.
- Power Tools Shell Extensions - still requires too much 1) software installation on the client and 2) training
- SharePoint - I believe there are actually two possibilities here: 1) using SharePoint exclusively (i.e. no need for TFS, since I understand SharePoint has document management of sorts built-in), or 2) SharePoint integration with TFS. (If that's not true, please feel free to correct me.) The biggest problem with this route is that our IT department is reluctant to introduce SharePoint into the organization because of 1) greater server demands and added complexity and 2) additional cost.
I think we would prefer a web interface for its simplicity and lack of client footprint, but I'm not aware of a good, simple one with low back-end requirements and relatively low cost. Any thoughts, ideas, and opinions appreciated.
Thanks!
Brad.