Sharing project binaries across different team projects in TFS 2010

Question

I am moving source code from a PureCM setup to a brand new TFS 2010 setup. I have got .net projects across multiple solutions, and these projects share binary outputs with each other. In pure CM world, these shared binaries were kept as "Shared Components". Is there a concept of "share source code" in TFS across Team Projects? any ideas what's the best approach to achieve this in TFS?

my current proposed structure in TFS as of now is as below:

• http://TFSServer/Development
  • Shared (this is a team project)
    • LocalResources-ProcessTasks-branch
    • LocalResources-Suite-branch
    • ExternalResources
  • ProcessTasks (this is a team project)
    • source code
    • LocalResources (branched to Shared>LocalResources-ProcessTasks-branch)
  • Suite (this is a team project)
    • Source code -LocalResources (branched to Shared>LocalResources-Suite-branch)

For each team project, the binaries go to local folder (eg. LocalResources), and then for each such folder which needs to be shared, I create a branch in Shared team project All binaries are referred from the "Shared" project's branched locations.

Now, the problem is that everyone in my team should have their "Shared" project's workspace at a same location to make this setup work.

Any ideas how i can improve on this setup?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Sharing binaries between several solutions, each in a separate team project, is not possible.

There are several ways to solve this. One possibility is, as you already described, to have a separate team project that contains the shared binaries.

Another approach ist to have a dedicated project every solution that contains the external dependencies. The disadvantage here is to keep all copies in sync: When a new binary version is available, it has to be replaced in every project that uses this binary.

For further information, have a look at How do you share external dependencies between Visual Studio solutions?