Git TFS is a program that extends git commands to talk to a TFS remote repository (instead of a git repository). It creates a real git repository and replays the TFS history on top of it. It can be treated as a real git repository except for when it comes to cloning and syncing. In spite of that it still makes a programmer’s life much easier.

The best starting point is the project’s ReadMe file on GitHub. Here’s a brief overview of basic commands I needed to use.

To install via chocolatey, run:

choco install gittfs

Make sure to add gittfs.exe to path. Chocolatey installed mine in “C:\Tools\Gittfs\“.

Cloning from TFS is a bit different from that of Git:

git tfs clone http://url-to-tfs:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection $/ProjectName

It will create an empty git repository and then replays the TFS repository on top preserving all the history. If the TFS repository is too big there are some switches available to the git tfs clone command that allows you to quickly clone the latest or a specific revision from the history. For more information, see the documentation for quick-clone.

After cloning, it has created a real git repository to which you can make as many local commits as you like. To push your local commits (or check-in in TFS terminology) you need to run the following command:

git tfs rcheckin

The rcheckin command will preserve all outstanding local commits and checks them in one by one to the remote TFS repository. Note that git push doesn’t work here as there’s no standard git remote being tracked.

There are other alternatives to rcheckin, such as git tfs checkin -m "message" which squashes your local commits into one using the specified message, or git tfs checkintool which opens up the TFS tools checkin window to perform the check-in. My preference is rcheckin because it keeps me mindful of my local commits, and abstracts TFS away better than others.

To update local repository with remote changes made in TFS default branch, you can pull and rebase, which is my preference:

git tfs pull --rebase

Pretty much like git, it pulls down outstanding remote commits and then replays local commits on top of it avoiding the need for an extra merge commit. Alternatively you can also pull and merge:

git tfs pull

which may end up creating a merge commit on top of your local changes (unless it can fast-forward). Have a look at documentations for git tfs pull to learn more about pulling from branches other than default.

As you can see when it comes to cloning and syncing, the commands are different from those of standard git. However the fact that you can easily modify the files you need to modify, have a much better diff status of what has been changed before every commit, and possibility of using your git client and tools that you like are what makes life easier with Git TFS.