Migrate from GIT to TFS and retain timestamp for check-in

Question

I have tried to migrate a GIT repository to TFS Online with following command

git tf configure https://myusername.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection $/NameOfTheProgram 
git tf checkin --deep --no-lock

It worked as it should. I got all files with history in TFS. But there is one detail that bothers me a lot. It now looks like that all the files are checked in today. It gets confusing when I go through the files, I can not see the difference between files that I changed yesterday and files that I have not touched in years.

Is there a way to migrate from GIT to TFS and retain timestamp of last check-in?

Answer 1

A check-in to TFS is always made on the date of the actual check-in. Technically it's possible, but it requires tweaking the server's registry and starting with a completely new ProjectCollection, plus the tool must be aware of this, since it needs to use a different API to check in the data.

At the moment Visual Studio Online does not provide this setting (though it would honor the API if all the check-ins were made in chronological order).

As an alternative, since you're already using GIT, why not use a Git repository on VSO and push your changes to it. Git commits retain their original timestamp, TFS will only update the date of the Push to today. The commit date remains untouched.