Hello,  somedays ago I was asked in twitter about connecting to Team Foundation Server without Visual Studio 2010 installed, and one of the simplest options is to use the TFS Power Tools September 2010

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/c255a1e4-04ba-4f68-8f4e-cd473d6b971f http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/c255a1e4-04ba-4f68-8f4e-cd473d6b971f

But, be careful, , these Power Tools, despite being developed by Microsoft, we have no official support for them, and also need at least Team Explorer 2010 installed on the machine.

Once downloaded the Power Tools, we will install it on our machine, with the typical installation is sufficient and we need to install the component.

Once installed, on the final screen we will an alert that warns us about we have to logoff and logon (and in some cases restart) again to activate the extension, so you know logoff and logon, or restart.

Are we back? Well, now, if we open in Windows Explorer any of the directories that we had connected through a workspace  of Team Foundation Server, and click right mouse button on any file or directory, we have the following menu:

That as you see we can work with source control without opening the Visual Studio 2010.

Easy right?

Another option is to use the Teamprise, Team Explorer Everywhere 2010, but that is for another post …