TFS Interview Questions

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TFS Interview Questions And Answers

Q1. What is Team  Foundation Server? What does it cover – version control? build processes? bug tracking? task management?

Ans: Team Foundation Server is defined in the documentation as:

Team Foundation is a collection of collaborative technologies that support a team effort to deliver a product. While the Team Foundation technologies are typically employed by a software team to build a software product, they can also be used on other types of projects.

As the customer already noted three of the core deliverable of the Team Foundation Server:

Build Process

List/Work Item Tracking

Source Control

This is leaving off probably the two most important features of the Team Foundation Server. By integrating the build process, source control, policy and work item tracking you can get a deep insight into what teams are doing and some analytics for future trends which leads to the 4th core deliverable of Team Foundation Server

Reporting

Having insight into how a team is tracking is really only half the answer there also needs to be a mechanism to share this information which brings us to the last feature of the Team Foundation Server:

Collaboration (Typically enabled through the Team Portal, Team Project and Process Guidance)

Interestingly it is the two missing categories that set Team Foundations Server apart from other offerings.

Q2. Explain TFS with respect to GIT?

Ans:

TFS

GIT

  • The team foundation server is a Microsoft Version. It supports about 5 million lines of code
  • TFS integrates with Visual Studio, SharePoint and Active Directory
  • TFS is more secure as you can assign read and write permission to an individual file
  • TFS requires SQL servers to store all kinds of data
  • TFS is centralized where the vast majority of the information is stored on the server
  • TFS does not support safe merge between unrelated branches
  • In TFS, you can do manual test tracking Installation will take about half a day
  • Analytics reports and chart option is given
  • Git is open source, and designed to support the source code of Linux Kernel and supports about 15 million lines of code. The development process is distributed all around the world.
  • Git does not support any of these
  • Git is less secure as the whole git repository is
  • Git is based on Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) which means every developer's copy can access every version of every file from anywhere
  • Git keeps every local copy fully independent
  • Git allows safe merge between unrelated branches
  • In Git, you cannot do manual test tracking
  • the installation will only take 10 minutes
  • Analytics reports and chart is not represented

 

Q3. Can I install the TFS 2010 Build Service on my TFS 2008 build machine? 

Ans: Yes, you can. Even though they both default to the same port (9191), they can share that port without any problems.

Q4. Can we disable the “Override CheckIn Policy Failure” checkbox? Can that be customized based on User Login, Policy Type of File type?

Ans: No. It is designed to be fully auditable by including policy compliance data in the changeset details and in the check-in mail that is delivered but left it up to the developer to determine whether they have a good reason for overriding.

Q5. What are the different events available in the event model and is there any documentation on them?

Ans: There is really only one SCC event and that is the one that is raised on check-in. Subscription is via the general event model that is discussed in the extensibility kit.

Q6. Are Deletes you make in TFS 2010 Source Control physical or logical? Can accidental deletes be recovered?

Ans: Deletes are fully recoverable with the “undelete” operation. You wouldn’t want to do a SQL restore because that would roll back every change to the TFS in the time since the file was deleted.

Q7. Can different Checkin Policies be applied on different branches? E.g. Can they have QA-specific policies applied on check-in in a QA branch?

Ans: No.

Q8. How do I redisplay source control explorer?

Ans: Selecting View > Other Windows > Source Control Explorer will display the Source Control Explorer window within the IDE.

Q9. Why doesn’t source control detect that I have deleted a file/folder on my local disk?

Ans: The main scenario here is deleting a file (by mistake or intentionally) outside of Team Foundation and then trying the get that file back from source control. If the file version has not changed the server thinks the user already has the file and does not copy it over. This is because the server keeps a list of files that the user already has and when activities are made outside of source control this list becomes out of date. Team Foundation Version Control does have a force get the option that will provide the functionality needed to obtain the desired version but it is currently partially hidden under the Get Specific Version Dialog window as a checkbox item.

Q10. Can I compare directory structures in TFS Source Control?

Ans: No, you cannot compare Directory Structures in TFS Source Control

Q11. Can we configure SCC to not check in the binary files? Where are such configurations done?

Ans: Team Foundation Version Control provides a way to limit check-ins by setting up check-in policies that are evaluated before check-in can take effect. The easiest way to do this is by authoring a policy that checks if the user is trying to check in a binary file from a given folder structure and rejects or accepts it in accordance.

Q12. How can I add non-solution items to source control?

Ans: This can be achieved by either clicking the Add icon or by going to File > Source Control and selecting the Add To Source Control menu item.

Q13. When a user “edits” a file in a “source-controlled” project, it gets checked out automatically. Is this configurable? Can we change this behavior?

Ans: Yes, it can be done by configuring TFS by going to Tools > Options > Source Control > Environment provides an option where a user can change the settings to not check out files automatically on edit.

Q14. What plugin/extensibility API does it expose?

Ans: The Team Foundation Server component model for modifying both the Process Template and creating plugins is built to be entirely open(in many cases the entry points are defined in XML configuration files). In addition to having this the development team and community are quite active in supplying samples of this:

Brian Harry

Buck Hodges

Rob Caron

This open platform has also enabled an ecosystem of add-ons like Teamlook, Teamprise, Teamplain, Teamword, and TFSPermission Manager.

Q15. How does it integrate with other non-MS platforms?

Ans: Team Foundation Server uses Web Services for cross-machine communication therefore the Team Foundation Server functionality can be made available to any computer. (see MSDN Team System Article on how to use these web services) This is exactly how companies likeTeamprise, and Teamplain, have built their clients to run on non-windows computers.

Q16. How does it integrate with other software (eg custom task management software etc)?

Ans: In addition to the integration methods mentioned above Team Foundation is also a popular platform for other software manufacturers to host themselves in. Examples of this are Borland with their Together and Caliber Products and Compuware Testing with DevPartner.

Q17. How does version control compare to Perforce? Branching, merging, change lists etc?

Ans: Team Foundation Server supports all normally expected Source Control features such as branching, merging, exclusively locking, remote disconnected scenarios, labelling, searching on various properties high fidelity reporting (how much code churn per person per project per iteration etc) plus a couple of newer paradigms like shelving and optimization for things like branching scenarios (many version control systems do a full copy for branches). I would have some performance comparisons but most systems don’t allow this.

Q18. Automated build system?

Ans: Yes Team Foundation Server includes an Automated Build System. This system is based on MSBuild and offers the additional functionality of automatically running tests, profiling, code analysis, verifying policies, and collating the changesets and work items for reporting.

Q19. Any support for distributed build tools? Eg integrating our custom data build tools into the system throughout a network?

Ans: MSbuild was written to be extensible and integrate with existing tools through easy-to-use XML training in Bangalore. Many of the commercial build utilities are already using and/or integrated with MSBuild –such as Cruisecontrol.net. In addition to making these actions part of the build script, I have found the generic tests set to run as part of the build to do just as good a job with a rich user interface and support for managing/filtering etc.

Q20. Documentation support – eg integrating documentation with code check-ins etc.

Ans: This would typically be done through an entry to a work item (to be either associated or resolved) at the time of check-in and linked with this work item.

The links to the documentation can exist in a couple of ways.

Checked in as Files (ie doc, HTML etc) Team Foundation Server makes it trivial to link all objects checked in (as well as other work items.)

Process guidance files that exist on the Windows Sharepoint Site – Again making it easy for linking.

External files once again to link in a Workitem entry.

Q21. Does it send data compressed over the network?

Ans: Team Foundation uses Web Services for cross-machine communication and by default automatically configures IIS using Compression.

Working from home / remote location?

Since cross-machine communication is accomplished through web services remote access is vastly simplified.

Working offline? If the server is offline?

Yes, you need to change the file property to offline via a command utility called TFPT and save the changes to your local workspace. Any subsequent check-in does get the latest which would resolve if there are conflicts to be merged.

Q22. Mention Whether All Of The Team Foundation Service Features Are Included Into The Team Foundation Server?

Ans: TFS service is updated every 3 weeks while Team Foundation Server “on-premise” is updated every 3 months. So, the on-premise version will always remain a little behind. However, TFS on-premise has got something that the TFS service does not.

You can use TFS Lab Customize work items/process templates

Q23. How Does It Integrate With Other Software (eg Custom Task Management Software Etc)?

In addition to the integration methods mentioned above Team Foundation is also a popular platform for other software manufacturers to host themselves in.

Examples of this are Borland with their Together and Caliber Products and Compuware Testing with DevPartner.

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