If you’ve been using and/or following Visual Studio Online and/or Team Foundation Server, you’re likely already familiar with the Features Timeline published by Microsoft. For those not familiar, it is essentially a running history of features that have been delivered via successive sprints (roughly every three weeks). Not only does it list available features but also shows what version of TFS the features is in (e.g. 2013.4) or whether it is VSO only (e.g. Future update).
Here is a partial screenshot of the current timeline:
The features in today’s release are shown at the top for 17 Dec 2014. You will notice that they are flagged as “Future update” which indicates that they are available in VSO (once the rollout has completed) but not yet available in TFS (on premises).
Looking at the top of this page is something relatively new, a section for “Features under development.” This section provides a glimpse into some of the more significant features that Microsoft is working to bring to VSO/TFS and provides a rough timeline indicating when those features might be made available (note: Planned Date reflects availability in VSO and Server reflects availability in TFS).
Currently, the features under development looks like this:
Something I am personally excited for is the Source Code Search Preview and, based on this, I shouldn’t have more than a few months to wait :-)
I personally hope to see more features show up in this roadmap but am excited for what’s already there as well.
Hi Jeff,
With all of the noise about Microsoft Office Dev being about github, how do you see TFS Online fitting in?
Cheers
Tony
Tony, I think the most important distinction at this point is that GitHub is typically utilized for open source (OSS) projects – which is how the majority of Microsoft’s OSS projects are made available to the public – whereas Visual Studio Online (or “TFS Online”) is typically used for private/corporate projects – i.e. VSO is not designed to support OSS projects.
That’s not to say that any of this won’t change in the future but, since Microsoft hasn’t made any road maps publically available, I can’t say whether VSO will ever support OSS projects or not.
So, if you want to publish an OSS project where the world can see and, potentially, interact with your source code, then I would recommend GitHub (or CodePlex if you prefer). If you want to manage your projects privately where only you, and those you select, can see the source code, then I highly recommend VSO.
Yeah – the distinction you draw seems reasonable.
I wonder whether internal dev teams might plump for a private GitHub setup over a TFS Online setup for their internal projects to prevent learning 2 Source Control systems?
Tony
@WorTony