Dexterity, Source Control, TFS, and the Future

Hello Dynamics GP Community!

There have been some questions around source code control when developing Dexterity customizations, so we wanted to publish a quick update for the community.

In the past we have been able to utilize drivers from different versions of Team Foundation Server (TFS) to prove source control for the Dexterity runtime environment.  We have found that as TFS is being transitioned to Azure DevOps (ADO) these same connection DLLs are no longer available to us.  This means that if you are using a more recent version of Visual Studio or TFS/ADO you may run into error messages that prevent source control actions (e.g. checking code in or out)  from working correctly.

As a reminder, here is what we versions of TFS we currently support for source control:

• Team Foundation Server 2010
• Team Foundation Server 2012
• Team Foundation Server 2013/2015

Each of these versions of TFS has its own compatibility with versions of Visual Studio.  We have observed that Visual Studio 2012 (update 4/5) seems to work most reliably, but that version is reaching end-of-life in January 2023.  It should still work beyond that point, but changing something like TLS protocols or .NET versions in your environment could potentially cause issues in the future.

Based on feedback we’ve received from ISVs and other developers in the GP community there are some other options that people are using.  These include using the Generic driver (which is probably most ideal for single-user environments) and utilizing GitHub for source code control.  I'm sure there are several other source control options that have been implemented out there as well.

As always, please feel free to leave feedback below.  There is also a great community of Dexterity developers with years of industry experience who frequent our Dynamics GP Community Forums.