Using VS2008 VS2005 with TFS 2010 Compatibility

The other day I was trying to setup a TFS 2010 server to demo it’s usage.  Since most of the developers using are VS2010, I didn’t have any issues showing them how to connect. But when it came to some designers that needed BIDS (VS2008) for creating reports for Reporting Services, I ran into some bizarre issues.  One of the main issues is that TFS 2010 uses project collections, which is new, and older clients need some backwards compatibility fixes.

Problem: Older versions of Visual Studio will not connect to TFS 2010.  You might get authentication or server unavailable errors.

Solution:  Install the backwards compatibility patches for you version of Visual Studio.  Below shows the steps to take to get your version of VS connected

1.  Install Visual Studio service pack:

VS2008 SP1: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en

VS2005 SP1: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BB4A75AB-E2D4-4C96-B39D-37BAF6B5B1DC&displaylang=en

2.  Install Team Explorer if you need it:

VS2008: http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=0ED12659-3D41-4420-BBB0-A46E51BFCA86&displaylang=en

VS2005: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=46473C2A-BB85-4461-BB27-4792A5DEF222&displaylang=ja&displaylang=en

3.  Install VS forward compatibility for TFS:

VS2008: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cf13ea45-d17b-4edc-8e6c-6c5b208ec54d&displaylang=en

VS2005: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=22215e4c-af6f-4e2f-96df-20e94d762689&displaylang=en

4.  Since TFS 2010 has introduced the concept of project collections connecting to TFS by adding a server to the Team Explorer will not work like it used to.  You have to modify the registry and insert the connection to the server with this type of format:  http://{TFS Server}:8080/tfs/{CollectionName} (some of the default here are port and tfs server root folder name).  The reason you can just add this as a new server is that the server path does not allow the “/” character.

VS2008: Enter a new string value at this key location “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Servers”.  The key name can be the name of you tfs project collection if you want.  The key I added for my project demo was http://d01teamweb/tfs/DefaultCollection with a key name DefaultCollection.

VS2005: Enter a new string value at this key location “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\TeamFoundation\Servers”.  The key name can be the name of you tfs project collection if you want.  The key I added for my project demo was http://d01teamweb/tfs/DefaultCollection with a key name DefaultCollection.

You’ll need to reopen any existing VS instances that need to pick up this information.  Once you open VS and go to the Team Explorer window, you should see the project collection you added to the registry.  Since 2005/2008 don’t handle project collection, they can only work with one at a time.