Our TFS Source Control is setup like this:
TFS Project
Solutions
WebApp1Solution
WebApp2Solution
Libraries
SharedLibrary1
Web Applications
WebApp1
WebApp2
When I open solution WebApp1Solution, it loads my workspace with projects from Libraries and Web Applications folder.
I would like to suspend my current workspace environment for both web apps and all shared libraries and start working on a specific version of this code from an earlier label (our last deployment). We do not have any branching as of yet.
From what I've read, I think these are my options:
1. Shelve pending changes on the solution and get the specific label version of the solution. What would happen when I check any changes back in?
2. Create a branch in Source Control from the specific label version. Would I have to create the branch on all of the folders in the different locations? How would I switch back and forth between my current code and new branch code?
Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Just create a branch at your TFS Project folder into a development folder. You should actually be doing this normally for all of your development. Your mainline branch should never contain anything except for your production deployable codebase. You should always be able to get latest of your mainline and build and run as the production end product.
All developers/teams of developers should have their own TFS folder where they can branch from mainline, make changes, test, etc... then once it has passed all approvals, merge it to mainline and destroy your devline.
As for "switching" your branch is a separate folder from your mainline. You can open both at the same time in different instances of Visual Studio, just like opening two solutions at once. Branching creates a copy of the folder/solution/project structure from the point of your branch. Then when you merge it back it reports differences and attempts to merge. If there are conflicts you will be prompted to review and resolve them. Most of the time TFS does a good job at auto-resolving, but I always carefully review all conflicts before selecting a method of resolution.
Related
We are currently running multiple branches within TFS 2013:
Development
Release
Trunk
etc.
Each branch has an automated test build. The purpose of these builds is to publish the latest code (and database changes) for each branch to our test server for manual testing. We maintain a separate IIS application for each branch so that different versions can be tested simultaneously.
Each branch has unique .csproj, .xml profile and web.config settings which control which application and database each branch deploys to, which works great.
However when we merge from one branch to another, auto-merge replaces these branch specific settings causing us to deploy our test builds to the wrong URL and database.
I am aware that auto-merge can be completely disabled in Visual Studio settings but is there a way we can continue to use auto-merge except for specific files?
Any suggestions welcome
This is a well known problem with any code promotion model. I would suggest that you move instead to a binary promotion model.
http://nakedalm.com/building-release-pipeline-release-management-visual-studio-2013/
With a binary promotion model you build the bits once with replaceable parameters and create or use a tool that orchestrates the release and feeds it with the correct variables for each environment.
http://nakedalm.com/create-release-management-pipeline-professional-developers/
I recently built out an end to end scenario using VSO. You can see in the post the passing of the values for each environment.
The software industry is moving towards continuous delivery and continuous integration. Neither of which is possible in a code promotion model.
You could disable auto conflict resolving during merge, but in this case you have to resolve these conflict manually (ignore)
Options -> Source Control -> Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
Attempt to automatically resolve conflicts when they are generated
or you could use tf.exe for merge:
tf.exe merge /discard CS
use a changeset which will be always discard from merge.
I use Team Foundation Server for source control. All of my projects use a structure that have dev, main, and release branches.
For the purposes of this question, I have 2 TFS projects, one is my application and the other is a shared library. The solution file for my application includes the shared library project (even though it is in a separate TFS project) because it makes it easier to debug. So I have a solution in 1 TFS project pointing to a project in another one.
The problem I'm running into relates to branches. What I'd like to do is point to the dev branch version of the shared library when in the dev branch of my application's solution. Similarly I want the main branch version of my solution to point to the shared library in the main branch, etc.
Does anyone have ideas of how to handle this?
I can't tell you if this is the best way, but I'm pretty sure it will work if you don't come up with anything better.
Create a symbolic link between the two directories, and map the project using that.
Add a pre-event MSBuild script to delete and recreate the symbolic link for each build based on the current branch. For example:
rmdir MyProject
mklink /d MyProject c:\dev\Main\MyProject
You'll probably want to put this in a batch file and call that.
I am setting up a CruiseControl.Net server. So far, it only builds a project (.Net website), and I kind-of know how to set up unit testing, code coverage, etc in the future.
What I will need to have soon is this:
The developers commit changes to SVN continually, thus CCNet builds often.
CCNet will publish the latest version to the development server, as soon as a commit is validated (with unit tests etc).
The project manager validates a specific version, in order to publish it to the pre-production server, and create a SVN tag from this revision.
The last point is where my problem lies: how exactly can I set up things so the project manager can, for instance, browse to the CCNet web dashboard, select a previous specific build, and says "this is the build I want to publish" ?
I believe that my thinking is flawed somewhere, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe CCNet is not the right place to do these manipulations ?
In my mind, I can create a SVN tag using CCNet, and mostly work from the trunk, but maybe I can't ? Maybe it's the other way around, and I should add a CCNet project every time a tag is created under SVN ?
The final goal is that I want to automate the publication process: zip creation (for archiving), web.config modification (using Nant for instance), and website publication (using FTP).
In all these steps, I want to limit the manual intervention to the maximum. If I can avoid to add a new project to CCNet every time a tag or branch is created in SVN, that would be awesome.
Thanks for your help, and sorry if it's not very easy to read, but it's not very clear in my head either...
Since you can create any task, you should be able to achieve the goal, though unfortunately not out-of-the-box.
Since you use SVN, it all depends actually on revision. I think I'd create a separate project for your third scenario and added a parameter where PM would provide revision number. Then based on that I'd tag sources etc. in my own task.
Regarding the other points, I think this is similar. Recently for web projects we started using MSDeploy, and in each stage build the MSDeploy package was created. Then there was a separate build called Deploy, that when forced allows us to select which package we want to deploy using MSDeploy.
Having several environments, however, started a little bit like overkill for managing with CCNet, and I'll be looking into kwakee at some time.
So we are trying out TFS right, for the most part you can pretty much figure it out, we created a test project and added it etc. All went well. The thing I haven't really grokked is what to do about externals, we have two large projects and they both reference a shared core project, and then some of the other parts of those two solutions are separate projects themselves which of course are externals as well.
We don't care about the history (we are at a point where we can make a clean break) so I was planning to go the route of 1) create new TFS 2) add projects exported from SVN.
Again my question is how to handle the externals - If someone coule point me in the right direction that would be great.
Thanks.
Unlike Subversion, TFS branches exist in "path space." So, you could check in your "externals" and create a branch for each distinct version of them you want to reference. Then, you can configure your workspace to reference the appropriate version from the corresponding branch path. Alternatively, you could consider managing these components via NuGet, setting up a private NuGet feed (can be as simple as a UNC path).
Overview
I am using VisualSVN in Visual Studio, VisualSVN Server on Windows, and of course, TortoiseSVN. I wanted to know what the best method of sharing multiple projects over multiple solutions was, and if there was a better method.
Layout
My Repository kind of looks like this (not their real names):
Library.Common
Library.Web
Library.DB
Library.CMS
Customer1.Site
Customer2.Site
Process
To create a new site that contains common projects:
Create Repository in SVN-Server, e.g. "Customer3.Site"
Create Web site using Visual Studio 2008, named "Customer3.Site", VisualSVN used to commit to the repository created in step (1).
Edit properties of Customer3.Site and specify the necessary projects as svn:externals, e.g. "Library.Common", "Library.DB", etc.
Perform an update, to get these external projects, and add them to my solution in Visual Studio, add the necessary references to the Customer3.Site web project and hit build.
So far so good.
The Problem
All this works fine, I am happy that if I have to modify any of the core Library projects I can do so right in the same environment and commit them to the repository. As more and more customer sites are built, I will then have to keep track of what I've done and remember to SVN Update and rebuild those sites which seems quite a long-winded task.
Is there a better way of doing this, a more best-practice solution? Am I breaking any fundamental SVN laws by doing it this way? I want to find a good solution that doesn't cost too much time and isn't overly complex either.
I've been facing a similar issue ... I am setting up a base install package for WordPress, something we would use to quickly get a site setup, it contains the core of wordpress + a set of baseline plugins, both third party and custom ones we've created. Everything pretty much comes from SVN.
Different plugins have different versions/tags and to setup an svn external pointing to a specific tagged version per project would be a nightmare ... only to then have to go into each and every project and do a property adjustment and then an update.
What going to be implementing is a vendor branch with specific versions as needed. All I should then have to do is update the client sites, since they will always be pointing to the latest versions (under my control in the vendor branches).
As to your problem, and also in my case: I would probably write a commit script to update all projects automatically when something in the vendor branch is updated.