Visual Studio extension to notify about TFS - visual-studio

Is there an extension to show something (text, icon, whatever) when current project under TFS receives an update?
My problem: I am constantly forgetting to do "Get latest version". Seeing something should help.
P.S.: sorry if it's an offtopic, but I recall question regarding programming environment were allowed here and I am not asking for a library... unable to check for sure due to missing Help in the new shiny top bar.

No such extension by default. The easiest way would be creating an alert as #Richard mentioned. When there is a check-in under a team project or a specific path, you would need to perform Get Latest, so you can create a Checkin alert.
Alternatively you could add a script to your source control. In this script, you can use tf get command to do get latest. You can always run this script when you would like to run.

Related

Visual Studio/TFS - Is there a way to prompt when a new version is checked in?

I'm looking for a way to prompt a user when a new version of a project they're working on is checked in. I've gathered that there is a way to automatically Get Latest Version but it was removed from later versions of Visual Studio in part because it's considered bad practice.
What I would like to be able to do is prompt the user (rather than doing it automatically) with the option to Get Latest Version - or merge their work, probably - if the version they're working from is older than the newest checked in version. Is there a way to accomplish this?
I'm fairly certain there's no way to do this within Visual Studio (if I'm wrong in this, please let me know) but is there a way to write a script or something that uses something like the VS/TFS command line commands to perform the check and throw the prompt to the user?
Thanks!
This is really a training issue. Every Developer should do a get latest before they start coding, and before they commit.
This is a basic practice and removes the need for complex customisations.
In TFS, you can work with alert systems to subscribe alerts when there is one new version for controlled files. Subscribers will have one email, and they will determine whether to get the newer version based on their requirement.
You can subscribe to get the alert with the Checkin alert category:
Please check this MSDN article for the details on configuring TFS alerts: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181334.aspx

AnkhSVN see recent change

I have just installed AnkhSVN, and it works great, I just have one question. If someone else in the project commits a change to a file, is there anyway for me to see this WITHOUT updating the project? If I change something a small red box shows up on that file in Solution Explorer, is there any way to get something like that when a file on the SVN is n newer version that on my local copy? In case that doesn't work. Is there anyway to see all changes that was made since last I updated. So I can keep track on whats going on in the project?
There's a tab called 'Recent Changes' in the 'Pending Changes' window that facilitates just that. See also http://ankhsvntips.net/post/1478971385/recent-changes-auto-refresh
I would recommend using a Google Code project. This way, you can easily keep track of any update or member of the project directly on the project's Google site.
Setting up a Google Code project is easy and pretty straight-forward. Since you already have AnkhSVN on Visual Studio, the only thing would be to link the Google Code project to your local project.
You can follow this as a guide : Google Code project using Visual Studio and AnkhSVN

Disable warning that solution is not under source control?

Shamefully, we use TFS at work for a C# project. I wish we could move to svn or git, but we can't change that. All of us working on the project hate the automatic check-out "feature" of TFS, so we checked in our solution and project files as unbound from TFS.
Now, whenever we open the project, we get the following message:
The solution you have opened is under source control but not currently configured for integrated source control in Visual Studio. Would you like to bind this solution to source control now?
Is there a way to disable this message while keeping the solution unbound from the buggy and annoying integrated source control?
The message you reference has nothing to do with TFS, it has to do with integrated source control within Visual Studio. If you really want to get rid of this message, go to Tools->Options->Source Control and set your source control provider to "none."
Then, go and download the Team Foundation Power Tools and enable the shell access, and you'll be able to right click within Windows Explorer and check in from there. If you don't want to do that, you can do your check-ins from the TF.EXE command line.
But seriously, if you don't like the automatic check-out, then just turn that off. You have the option of having TFS automatically check out, prompt you for check out, or do nothing and leave the files in a read-only state until you explicitly check them out.
Another possibility could be to move to a 'git-tfs' combined solution. You would move your team to git, and sync with TFS on a regular basis. This way, only one person has to live with the TFS annoyances.
I have no experience with that, but apparently it has been tried before
If you like the svn/git model better, then I honestly wonder why you would want to turn off automatic checkout? You can configure VS to silently check out files on edit. This comes pretty close to the svn way of working, no?
Also, ensure that the TFS server is configured to allow multiple checkout on all text-based files, and you should be good to go. You can also install your own diff and merge tools (e.g. TortoiseDiff/TortoiseMerge) if you want.

Renaming files: Visual Studio vs Version control

The problem with renaming files is that if you want to take advantage of Visual Studio refactoring, you really need to do it from inside Visual Studio.
But most (not all*) version control system also want to be the ones doing the renaming.
One solution is to use integrated source control, but this is not always available, and in some cases is pretty clunky.
I'd personally be more comfortable using source control separately, outside of Visual Studio, but I'm not sure how to manage this question of file renames.
So, for those of you that use Visual Studio, which source control do you use? Do you use a VS integration (which one?) and otherwise, how do you resolve this renaming problem?
(* git is smart enough to work it out for itself)
I use SVN (TortiseSVN as the client) and use the Repair Move command from the commit dialog heavily. This allows me to rename the files within VS and resolve the rename when I'm ready to commit to keep version history.
As far as using the VS integration, like you, I find all VS integration clunky and do not use it.
mercurial usually prefers to do the renaming via hg rename however it can also detect renames from an outside source by using hg addremove -s 100 (or less than 100 if you want to match a rename with alterations) so clearly you can let VS do the rename and get mercurial to catchup with addremove.
We use SVN (TortoiseSVN to be exact), and i am always bothered with the renaming problem. The simplest solution i've found is to remove the files from the project, rename them via TSVN and add them back to the project. You have to manually update includes for renamed header files, but this is relatively easy using find&replace.
We use Team Foundation Server, and it works with no problems. I've also found that moving to using a fully integrated client has improved my workflow, as I don't need to flip between applications just to do trivial tasks.
We develop "Plastic SCM" and the Visual Studio Package supports move operations. But I see your point, I'm getting more and more comfortable with the idea of not having plugins/packages and then have the version control working behind the scenes and simply detecting what happened without having to be "plugged in" into the IDE. In fact we're working on it for next release...
Besides the above advice, for Visual Studio 2008 I found that after making all global changes to any file being renamed from within VS, including right clicking the file and renaming it, as well as a global search and replace for all strings, replacing the old file name with the new file name, you must, if the file is the initial startup file, right click and select it as "set as default page". Otherwise you'll may well get the "The resource cannot be found." error on runtime.

Bazaar (bzr) integration with Visual Studio

What's the best way to use Bazaar (bzr) as the version control system in Visual Studio 2008?
The best I found is TortoiseBZR and the command-line - nothing integrated with VS.
I wouldn't even bother with TortoiseBZR; bzr is very easy to use from the command line.
BTW: The last time I tried it, TortoiseBZR used to lock up windows explorer while it went off to a remote repository to determine the status of files, not sure if it still does this ... ? See also this SO question.
There is no native integration to Visual Studio, but there is good GUI application, called Bazaar Explorer. It's the part of official standalone installer, and also can be installed separately as bzr plugin.
Old, I know, but since this shows up on the top for Google search, the best way to integrate is a combination of Visual Studio's External Tools, and tbzrcommand.exe and bzr.exe. You can set up things like Status to go to the output window, and things like Diff to go to the tbzrcommand GUI window.
(I'm assuming you've installed TortoiseBzr here.) Using these as examples, in VS open Tools->External Tools, then Add. For the program, browse to the Bazaar directory and select bzr.exe. Name the command Status. For arguments, type "status" (sans quotes). Select that the output should be directed to the vs output window, that the command should be terminated when complete. Open a simple file under code control and add a space somewhere and save, then under external tools, choose status to verify that it shows up as a pending commit action. (You can add these to their own menu later, once they work.)
Next, add another external command and name this Diff. For the program, browse to the Bazaar directory, and choose tbzrcommand.exe. For arguments, type "--command=diff --file=$(TargetPath)" (sans quotes). Leave the options all unchecked. Then, for the file above that you added a space, select it in the solution explorer window and choose Tools->Diff. A TortoiseBzr window should appear (along with an annoying DOS window), and show differences between the working version and the latest commit version of the file.
For something like a commit, which requires a comment, you'll have to put in arguments like "commit -m " (sans quotes) and check the box to prompt for arguments (to allow the entry of a message for the commit).
There's a project in Launchpad, but it looks like it's abandoned, and when I downloaded it, I couldn't get it to build.
This is something I'm interested in myself. Tracking adds, drops and renames automatically in an IDE is the way to go. Seeing status is nice too.
If you don't need the SCC integration, just the ability to use the tool, try the setup in this article:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/macros/Bazaar4VS.aspx
I've ported VisualHG to work with Bazaar:
https://launchpad.net/visualbzr
It's currently an alpha version, and has only been built and tested for Visual Studio 2010, but common operations should work OK.
Edit:
This plugin hasn't moved on much, but it does now support Visual Studio 2012.
Unified SCC has support for bzr. It is commercial but claims to be free for OSS projects.
UnifiedSCC
I too was trying to use this, and found that visual studio has an option of "External Tools", which can be found under the tools tool bar. Upon trial, I found that one could create a link to the bzr.exe (or any other exe tools you may want to use). Then, it asks for arguements. It is here where you can begin to use magic.
For me, to commit changes directly, I have created an arguement of commit -m "", which commits without message to the bzr branch if one exists in the working directory (to achieve this, you also have to change the starting directory to solution directory).
I also created a push command to my launchpad using similar idealogy

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