Blank Compare in Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 - visual-studio-2013

I have a problem in Visual Studio 2013 (Update 5), when opening a project development on another machine, using the same version, Visual Studio marks all the files as containing differences, however when checking each file "Compare with Unmodified ", all files are blank, meaning no difference whatsoever.
If I select the "Undo" option in the project, close the project and open it again the problem does not happen.
The big problem is when I actually get changes made in my project, checking file by file will stretch a great deal of time.
Has anyone ever had a problem like this?

There are a few things I know that can cause this behavior:
Your machine and/or the TFS Server is configured to enforce FIPS compliance which invalidates the hashing algorithm used to calculate differences. If this is the case, then all machines connecting to the TFS server and the server itself must be configured to enforce FIPS compliance, otherwise the hashes will be out of sync and all files will be marked changed.
There are whitespace changes, some plugin may be changing all line-endings from windows to linux or vice versa. Or doing the same with tabs and spaces. Your diff settings may be ignoring whitespace differences, so even though the files are different, they're the same according to the merge tool. You can configure whitespace checking using the = button on the diff toolbar.
You're using server workspaces and something or someone has removed the read-only bit from your files. Choosing "Go Offline" and then "Go Online" from the File -> Source Control menu should trigger a full compare of your local version against the server to restore sanity.
As a workaround, you can select "Undo Unchanged" from the Source Control Explorer or from the commandline (if you have the Visual Studio TFS Power Tools 2015 installed).

Related

Visual Studio Diff shows unwanted case differences

I'm trying to compare two versions of a VBA file which are placed on a TFS. The Diff Tool shows several changes, but there actually are none.
♪And they don't stop coming...
In fact, VS tries to beautify the code by changing it's case despite the fact that I turned the Pretty Listing feature off.
Example
Well, I've disabled literally EVERYTHING here
Note: VS does not change the files either on disk or TFS.
The question is how to make it stop. I can't find real changes when comparing files.
Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2019
Version 16.4.6

Is it safe to keep working in Visual Studio whilst doing a check-in?

I've been through all the Visual Studio Source Control documentation and so on but I can't find an answer as to whether it's safe to keep working in Visual Studio whilst it's doing a check-in?
We're using Visual Studio 2015 with Visual Studio Team Services source control.
Sometimes there's one or more files (like video files) that take a while to check in, sometimes an hour or more. I'm worried that if I keep working (specially if I work on the same files that are busy checking in) it'll corrupt the process.
Normally, it is safe as TFS won't check the changes again after you click check-in button. It just check in the changes you made before click check-in. So edit the file does not affect the check in process.
But in some case, for exmaple, the internet access is disconnected during check-in, then you click "Refresh" button to reconnect to TFS service. The changes will be refreshed too. That means the changes you made during checking is been included now. And there isn't any way to restore to the version that you'd like to check in.
So, you'd better avoid this as possible as you can and check in large files when you are not working with them.

How to switch to TFS automatically when solution is loaded?

I have an annoying problem with source control plugins... I'm using VS2012 and I have some projects on TFS and others on SVN (using AnkhSVN).
When I open a SVN solution, VS seamlessly switches to AnkhSVN as the source control plugin, which is fine. But then, when I open a TFS solution, it doesn't switch back to TFS... the most annoying effect is that automatic checkout doesn't work. To fix it, I have to unload the solution, changes the source control plugin to TFS, and reload the solution.
Is this a known problem? Is there a way to fix it?
There is not a good option that I can think of. That part of Visual Studio is designed to work only with one Source Control system at a time and I understand your pain.
I guess my first question is why you need both, but I guess there is some need somewhere. You can see folks with the same problem:
How to quickly switch source control providers in Visual Studio 2010?
Option 1: Virtualisation
As I have a machine capable of running VM's (Windows 8 with Hyper-V) I would have two VM's with one configured for TFS and the other configured for SVN. Not elegant, but it would allow you to switch.
Option 2: Regedit
You can change the setting in the registry.
HOW TO: Change Source Control Providers If Two or More MSSCCI-Compliant Providers Are Installed
So you could have a "key" file for each setting stored on your desktop and:
Close Visual Studio
Run registery key
Open Solution
While ugly and requires remembering it would be the best option locally.
Conclusion
There is no good answer but I do think that the two options above will get you there.

Getting Visual Studio to ignore source control bindings in a solution

Is there a way to tell Visual Studio 2005 to just ignore source control binding when opening a solution? I sometimes need to load a solution for which I don't have access to the source control server, but Visual Studio insists on trying to connect anyway, meaning I have to click "temporarily work offline in disconnected mode" for every project in the solution (of which there are about 20) as it loads. For some reason, it also tries to check each project out immediately after I've told it to work offline, so I have to click past that dialog box too.
As I will never need to edit anything in this solution, is there any way I can open it and have Visual Studio just ignore the fact it has source control bindings in it?
Edit: Ideally, I'd like a way to do this without having to change the project/solution files. They change fairly frequently, so I'd have to redo any changes every time there was a new version (otherwise I'd just unbind them once and it wouldn't be a problem).
Thanks for the replies so far.
The source control bindings are stored in Visual Studio solution file (.sln). For TFS for example, it contains a global section for TFS information and the solution projects added to TFS. You can edit the solution file to remove these bindings manually. I would suggest making a copy of the solution file first. However, I would recommend removing bindins via Visual Studio. Open your solution and go through the offline scenario. Then go to File/Source Control/Change Source Control (VS 2008) to bring up the UI that shows you the source control bindings in your solution. There you can manage the bindings including unbinding them. Once unbound, the next time you open the solution, VS should not have a need to access the source control.
I've been looking for a way to disable Integration between SourceSafe 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. We are forced to use SourceSafe being in a corporate environment and all. SourceSafe is fine on its own if you treat it like a baby. As soon as you try to do anything approaching useful it starts to break. God forbid you try to use the integration with Visual Studio. Being that I didn't want the "Bindings removed" so that it doesn't confuse other devs on the team I needed to be able to tell Studio to ignore the solution and project bindings and continue on it's merry way.
I followed the registry hack suggested in the following post
Removing SourceSafe Integration from Visual Studio 6
Studio did what I wanted...sort of. It removed the SourceSafe integration. However when I opened up a source controlled solution it asked me if I wanted to remove the bindings.
"the projects will be treated as not under source control"
No I don't want you to remove the bindings from the files, I want you to IGNORE them. This dialog pops up every time you open the solution/project file and there is no way around it.
My solution at the moment seems to have worked...for now.
File->Source Control->Change Source Control...->Disconnect
I hope this helps anyone else in the position of having to use SourceSafe but can't remove the bindings from the files themselves. WHY, Microsoft, WHY would you put the bindings in the files themselves?
/rant

Removing SourceSafe Integration from Visual Studio 6

Recently, the SourceSafe integration into visual studio has started to perform badly because we have moved, and the SourceSafe "server" is located across a VPN which goes across a slow connection. This has made loading large projects in visual c++ 6 take 5+ minutes because it has to talk to the "server" for each project. Also, there are some bugs that are dangerous in the integration (the auto-checkout of certain shared projects will do a get latest on the wrong version of a branched file). This has caused me to want to disable the SourceSafe integration, however I have not found any menu option or uninstall option. Google has reported a few registry tweaks, but none of them seemed to work.
Does anyone know of an easy way to remove the SourceSafe integration from Visual C++ 6, without uninstalling SourceSafe altogether?
From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236399:
Source code control software, such as
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, that
integrates with the Visual C++
integrated development environment
(IDE) can be configured to connect to
a source code server during Visual C++
startup. In such cases, a loss in
network connectivity will cause Visual
C++ to start up very slowly. To
improve performance, either ensure
proper network connectivity or disable
the source code control software
integration with the Visual C++ IDE.
To do the latter, quit Visual C++, and
then use RegEdit.Exe to locate the
following registry key and set its
Disabled value to (DWORD) 0x00000001:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DevStudio\6.0\Source Control\Disabled
I followed this and it seemed to work upon trying it again. I think I might've had a second copy of visual studio running when I did it the first time.
Open the .dsp and .dsw file in a text editor, and remove the respective entries from the .dsp and the .dsw file. Also, delete the .scc files.
There is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about how to do exactly this.
The gist of it is that you must manually edit the .dsw and .dsp files in a text editor, and remove a few other files lying around. See the article for more details.
If the solutions mentioned above fail for you do this:
Rename folder: \Program Files\Microsoft\%vs%\Common7\IDE\VS SCC
VS will complain once about plug in not being there and you say "Yes" to ignore it in perpetuity.
All files “got latest,” “read only,” and edited in VS, will make VS complain and offer to “override”, which works fine for me.
What do you gain:
Open VSS-linked solutions quickly without VS matching contents to VSS server.
Open VSS-linked solutions and EDIT the files at will without being bogged down in “check out” bs.
This makes using other distributed source control system on top of project tree with VSS bindings painless.
VSS client still works by itself just fine, including diff, checkout, checkin.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DevStudio\6.0\Source Control\Disabled
I followed this and it seemed to work upon trying it again. I think I might've had a second copy of visual studio running when I did it the first time.
Its working .....Thanks Ajay
What has worked for us, and is much easier, requires no registry/file editing by hand, and safer I think is this:
1) Exit Visual Studio completely.
2) Disconnect from the network (unplug the cable and turn off wireless, or disable the network adapters)
3) Open the VS6 workspace (DSW) for the project. When it starts up it will find it cannot connect with the VSS database it wants to and ask you about that...
4) Tell VS to never try to reconnect to the source control db in the future.
5) Done... VS does all the changes to THAT WORKSPACE/PROJECT setup for you. You are not disconnecting VS from source control in general (like a registry edit would do) and your not manually editing files.

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