svntfstfs-code-reviewsvnbridge

TFS Code Review from an SVN Bridge?

Yes, the title is correct. Is there a way to code review a project that exists in TFS (Microsoft's Team Foundation Server) from a user's computer that is connected to that TFS repository via an SVN Bridge?

(related: an SVN Bridge is a tool that allows the use of Subversion tools to connect to an TFS repository)

Why? Because we have developers that highly defend (to their death) the use of SVN over TFS. And these senior developers will be doing the code reviews of checkins from the the 3rd party vendor.

The problem is that the project currently resides in TFS, and will remain there (per CTO's instructions). We are allowed an SVN Bridge, but yet it is not clear to me if any of these code review tools support such a cross-platform.

How would it? Well, I would think that it would know the files in the code review package. Why can't it compare those files to an SVN directory instead of an TFS?

What prompted me to think of this environment is this demo of Code Collaborator:

http://smartbear.com/docs/viewlets/CodeCollabDemo/CodeCollabDemo.html

Screenshot:

enter image description here

Notice that at the begining, it asks for what repository to review? What if the remote team chooses TFS, and the local team chooses SVN? Yes, I'll ping their technical support for that question. But I also wanted to post the question here for anyone that may have a similar setup.

Thanks in advance.

Solution

  • If your svn bridge software is sufficiently advanced, Code Collaborator will just see the repo as a svn repo, so there's no problem. The Code Collaborator Clients (GUI and commandline) all exec a subversion commandline client (that you can specify the path and name of) to get their information. If you turn on the debugging log (via --debug on the commandline or via the Help menu in the GUI) you can even see exactly what svn commands are being executed. As long as those have output compatible with 'real' subversion, you should be fine as your client will just see it as a svn repository.

    Since the author of a review is usually the only person to add files to a review, the issue of trying to compare files in TFS to files in Subversion-bridged-to-TFS in the same review shouldn't come up - which is good, because that would actually not work since the files are in two different SCMs. As long as a single author sticks to one SCM or the other, you should be fine.

    (PS: I work for SmartBear doing IT, development, and tech support)