What will I actually miss if basing my source code handling on TFS (to get all the integration and reporting etc) but use git-tf or git-tfs locally?
Will I then be able to use the complete git functionally to branch and merge locally just as if used a git based central repository, or will there be a different workflow and limitations to consider?
We use feature and release development branches a lot and like to keep doing so, how does actually the TFS server handle this when pushing these locally using git-tf etc?
If you use git-tf (the MS version) firstly you will have to understand the commands you use will be different - they stuck an additional "tf" in every command. (eg git tf push)
The second is that branching will not work like git - I found (and this could be due to security setups and suchlike, even though I can create branches locally and on the server) that whilst you can branch your local git setup, you cannot push a new branch back to the server - you have to merge it onto an "offical" branch first.
If using TFS, I wouldn't bother trying to use any of the bridges (though svn-tfs bridge is very close due to the nature of TFS being close to SVN). I'd use the native client. I wouldn't choose TFS first though, but if that was what I had to use - the Team Explorer Everywhere client would be my choice.