Serena Dimensions for Eclipse internal error while delivering: attempted to beginRule - serena

I worked locally on a major refactoring of a project of ours. It involved creating packages, removing packages, moving files, all that jazz. Of course the whole point of using Serena Dimensions is making it so that you cannot actually do so without creating a ticket, but the changes were so large that it was easier to have somebody with privileges log in on Serena from my workspace and simply commit the changes as herself.
Attempting to do so did not work. We got the following error: "attempted to beginRule". This was happening on new files in a new package, and even while logged in as her I couldn't find anything about file- or folder-specific "rules". She also had no idea what to do.
What to do?

We couldn't dig to the actual cause of the issue, but it seems that there was an issue with the order of operations Dimensions attempted to commit all the changes in. I say that because we worked around the issue by delivering the changes package by package, morsel by morsel, leaving the critical package last. Delivering those changes last then worked.
This operation did leave a completely unrelated file or two in a bogus concurrent checkout status between the superuser and another team member; the superuser's web interface however only showed the team member's checkout. We performed an undo checkout from our coworker's machine (right click on file → team → show history → right click on the relevant log line → undo checkout) and both checkouts vanished. From then on, it was business as usual.

Related

VisualSVN - disable auto checkout

Recently switched jobs and with it switched source control from TFS to SVN, which is new to me.
In TFS there was an option to disable automatic checkout of files when you started typing in them. It's enabled by default and a lot of users like this behaviour, but I prefer to know for certain what's being changed before committing. A personal thing.
VisualSVN auto-checkouts by default. Is there an similar option to turn it off? I can't seem to find out in the settings.
"Automatic checkout" term in SVN and in TFS worlds has different meanings, as far as I see.
In Subversion, checkout relates to svn checkout operation which gets a working copy from a repository. In TFS it looks like the term somehow relates to automatic locking mechanism.
If you want a file to be locked automatically when you start modifying it in Visual Studio (with VisualSVN extension installed), see the KB article "Lock-Modify-Unlock Model with VisualSVN". I also suggest reading the SVNBook chapter "Locking".
Generally speaking, you can set svn:needs-lock property on files. The property instructs client which files must be locked before editing. After applying svn:need-lock to a file the file gets read-only attribute. Before editing the file must be explicitly locked by the user. After committing the lock is released by default.
Short answer: I don;t think you can do this without becoming very unpopular.
I think you should read up on the SVN redbook's description of how SVN works, especially the versioning models
In your environment, everyone wants to be able to modify any file locally and then send their changes to the server, merging changes with colleague's changes if necessary. This approach works well if 2 people are not changing the same files all the time, which is typical of most dev shops.
The old TFS/VSS model of checkout a file to work on it is pretty obsolete today - the more 'optimistic' approach where you assume you have exclusive access is much more productive. (as usual its easier to ask forgiveness if it goes wrong than ask permission every time)
Your main problem is that you cannot mix these models - if your colleagues are using the merge model, then you have to as well. You cannot lock a file and expect them to still be able to change any file anytime.
Now, there are tricks you can use to prevent yourself from modifying files you never meant to - I'm not sure of VisualSVN but TortoiseSVN (awesome tool) can run client hooks - ie you can write a program to run on every checkout, and that program can be as simple as setting every file's read-only flag. Whether this is god enough for you is another matter.
Personally, I would get used to the idea of change whatever you like whenever. If you accidentally edit a file, you can see the change indicator (AnkhSVN turns the file icon orange for changed files), and its easy to 'svn revert' changes you didn't want to make. Also SVN lets you see diffs really easily, especially on commit - double click the files in the commit dialog. The productivity gains from being able to work without the tools getting in your way (as I found with TFS continually pinging at me as I tried to edit a file) are huge. The SVN tools are really good to let you "ask forgiveness" so you don't need to run in the crappy old TFS way now you've upgraded to something better.
The other advantage is that this applies to files that are not in a Visual Studio project, if you've ever had a project file that was edited outside VS (eg a generated WCF client stub) then you will appreciate how SVN works - never again will you do a full commit and find that TFS has conveniently decided that your changed file wasn't changed and so didn't need to be committed!

TFS 2012 not detecting deleted files in pending changes

We have multiple developers on our team. This works for everyone except one developer, but we cannot seem to find the reason it does not work for this individual. We all have VS premium+, TFS 2012 power tools installed.
We have a branch. We get latest version from branch. Go to windows explorer and delete all files in folder "sdk" (there exist no subdirectories in sdk/). Then we copy into it a bunch of files. (This effectively leaves some files as new files, updated files, identical files or removed files when compared with what was deleted.)
When we go to pending changes, these changes show up under "Excluded Changes - Add(s) 51, Deletes(3)".
Except for one developer. His system does not recognize these changes. What might cause this to not work for him?
If it helps troubleshoot, he is also the only developer that if he were to delete these files via power tools delete option in windows explorer, his .dll files get locked. This does not happen for anyone else either.
This is what we've checked so far:
EDIT: Solution Found - Thank you all for the responses! It was indeed the local vs server workspace option. Setting his workspace to local solved these and a few other issue he was apparently having.
Make sure that the developer is using a "Local Workspace" as opposed to the "Server Workspace".
This is a concept which was introduced in TFS 2012 which helps developers to work offline as opposed to server workspace in earlier versions which did not allow that. TFS 2012 changes up the workspace options. Server workspaces are still available, and work exactly has they have in previous versions. However, TFS 2012 now contains a new type of workspace, called a Local workspace. Again, this is an oversimplification, but in a Local workspace, all the files are read/write, not read-only. The meta-data about the files is stored in a hidden folder in the root of the workspace, which allows edits, renames and deletes to be done locally without any communication to the server.
This improves the offline story with TFS significantly, as you no longer encounter issues with editing read-only files. It also makes it easier to work with other tools (such as Notepad) to edit code files. Making a change to a code file using Notepad will still mark that file as edited, which will be picked up by TFS the next time you connect.
LINK
This only ever happens when a user tampers with a local view of source control (be it a local workspace, or not). If all you ever did was get latest from TFS this would never occur, instead, the local view of what is in TFS would always be properly managed.
Also sounds like a bad merge, e.g. getting latest (where the files no longer exist) then copying in old content (introducing untracked files.) One thing you might try doing to correct the issue is doing a forced fetch from TFS after deleting the local workspace contents BEFORE attempting a merge. This will ensure that the local workspace is up to date an accurate with what the TFS server believes is truth, if it still occurs after merging in content then the problem is almost certainly within the merge process the user is going through (i.e. PEBKAC, or a knowledge gap about what they are doing.)
If you unshelve old content (pre-deletion) into the local workspace (where the deletions have already been performed, according to the SCC, and thus locally because of a sync/get-latest) then the unshelved files will effectively become untracked and it's up to the user to clean up the mess. This is identical to a user having copied loose files into their workspace that TFS never had any knowledge of. TFS isn't going to prune untracked files for you, I believe some other source control tools might do this as a configurable default, TFS does not.
That this is only happening to one developer in the team suggests that the other developers, one at a time, should sit with this developer and drive using "their process" to see if it still occurs for them. More often than not this comes down to a bad process a user has adopted, and putting a different person in the chair can help highlight why it has been occurring and help end it. A disciplined build/source manager and/or developer should not experience this problem.
Very interested in knowing what the problem turns out to be.

SVN multiple developer working on single file at same time

Actually I have faced this issue many time during working with SVN. Most of the time I am working with VSS for source control but since last couple of months working with SVN.
We are using tortoise and AnkhSVN with VS 2010.
In our team there are 5-6 people and some of them are working on same file at a time. Now when somebody commit , we have seen that some other developer changes get vanished and Sometime we get some line with version number. This thing get consume lots of time and we have to resolve conflict and all.
Please provide information so we can avoid such issues.
If two developers are working on the same file and make changes to the same are of code, then you have to manually resolve this conflict. There is no way to avoid it, no matter which version control you use.
The version control cannot know what the correct code is, so it requires a human intervention.
There is no way around this, other than preventing the users from working on the same code. this is done in svn by locking the file.
Each developer must svn update before svn commit. Between the update and commit, the developer must do a full, clean build and run all tests to make sure their code still works after merging in all other developer's changes into their copy.
You can set svn:needs-lock on files or folders that need to be locked before making changes, they'll be forced to check for locks. When you will try to edit a file, you will be required to lock it first. And when it is already locked by someone else, they you get an error message, preventing you from making any changes. This can be done in Tortoise SVN in Properties -> Advanced

Team Foundation Server error

I have done some work on a VS 2010 project which is under TFS. I have created a shleveset and want to unshelve the shelveset on another system. But I am getting following error:
---------------------------
Microsoft Visual Studio
---------------------------
Multiple errors occurred during the operation, the first of which is displayed below. A full error list is available in the Output Window.
TF203015: The item $/ConsumerCredit/project1/project1.Database/project1.Database.dbproj has an incompatible pending change.
---------------------------
OK
How can I fix it
Some guesses:
Look at your list of pending changes. You may already have opened this file for delete or rename or something like that. You can't get the file out of the shelveset because you opened it in the shelveset for something different such as for 'edit'.
You'll probably have to undo your pending change on this file and then get the shelveset.
Or possibly you locked the file when you checked it out on one system, so you can't start editing on the other system (getting it out of the shelveset would adding to your pending files for edit). You could undo the checkout of the file on your first system.
This is a slight aside to the OP's question
You can get a TF203015 when you try and batch merge a multiple changesets from one branch to the other without due care.
Consider a situation where you have a MAIN trunk and a DEV branch. You branched DEV from MAIN and have dillegently worked away at a feature in DEV; checking work back into DEV as you progressed. Now fast forward a week or two. You are now feature complete and want to merge back into MAIN.
This is where one of our devs hit this error.
He had been woking on one solution for weeks, and checking changesets back into DEV periodically, so wanted to merge a non contiguous series of changesets back into MAIN.
So he picks the merge option, selects the first changeset; merges withoout issue, then immediatley went to merge the next changeset; and bang TF203015, and its very unhelpfull test in teh output window; incompatible pending changes.
After a little fiddling around we now realise what is going on here; the first merge created a pending change in MAIN for the developers solution. The next merge attempt was also changes to the same solution, which would require TFS to "queue up" a second set of pending changes to the same files. It cant do this.
So in this scenario TF203015 means; "The destination branch already has pending changes on some files that are changed in this changeset. Please resolve and commit the destination branch changes before perfoming this merge operation"
The solution; after each merge operation our developer tests the workspace for MAIN and commits the pending change caused by the merge, then goes back to DEV and repeats.
Actually sensible and simple, but masked by a very obtuse error message.

TF203015 The Item $/path/file has an incompatible pending change. While trying to unshelve

I'm using Visual Studio 2010 Pro against Team Server 2010 and I had my project opened (apparently) as a solution from the repo, but I should've opened it as "web site". I found this out during compile, so I went to shelve my new changes and deleted the project from my local disk, then opened the project again from source (this time as web site) and now I can't unshelve my files.
Is there any way to work around this? Did I blow something up? Do I need to do maintenance at the server?
I found this question on SO #2332685 but I don't know what cache files he's talking about (I'm on XP :\ )
EDIT: Found this link after posting the question, sorry for the delay in researching, still didn't fix my problem
Of course I can't find an error code for TF203015 anywhere, so no resolution either (hence my inclusion of the number in the title, yeah?)
EDIT:
I should probably mention that these files were never checked in in the first place. Does that matter? Can you shelve an unchecked item? Is that what I did wrong?
EDIT:
WHAP - FOUND IT!!! Use "Undo" on the items that don't exist because they show up in pending changes as checkins.
I had deleted the files in trying to reload the workspace, even though I had shelved the changes. Then VS2010 thought those files were still pending to save. I didn't need that, so I had to figure out to "undo" the changes in Pending Changes.
Then I could unshelve.
It thought I had two ops (unshelve, commit-for-add) going simultaneously, and I thought I had only one op (unshelve).
This is a slight aside to the OP's question
You can get a TF203015 when you try and batch merge a multiple changesets from one branch to the other without due care.
Consider a situation where you have a MAIN trunk and a DEV branch. You branched DEV from MAIN and have diligently worked away at a feature in DEV; checking work back into DEV as you progressed. Now fast forward a week or two. You are now feature complete and want to merge back into MAIN.
This is where one of our devs hit this error.
He had been working on one solution for weeks, and checking changesets back into DEV periodically, so wanted to merge a non contiguous series of changesets back into MAIN.
So he picks the merge option, selects the first changeset; merges without issue, then immediately went to merge the next changeset; and bang TF203015, and its very unhelpful test in the output window; incompatible pending changes.
After a little fiddling around we now realize what is going on here; the first merge created a pending change in MAIN for the developers solution. The next merge attempt was also changes to the same solution, which would require TFS to "queue up" a second set of pending changes to the same files. It cant do this.
So in this scenario TF203015 means; "The destination branch already has pending changes on some files that are changed in this changeset. Please resolve and commit the destination branch changes before performing this merge operation"
The solution; after each merge operation our developer tests the workspace for MAIN and commits the pending change caused by the merge, then goes back to DEV and repeats.
Actually sensible and simple, but masked by a very obtuse error message.
You can use the Team Foundation Server Power Tools March 2011 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb980963.aspx) that includes the command tfpt unshelve.
Once the Power Tools are installed, open a Visual Studio command prompt, change to the directory that contains the project of interest, and execute the tfpt unshelve command. It will unshelve and display the merge dialog so you can resolve the conflicts.
I credit this blog post with helping me find this solution: http://fluentbytes.com/the-how-and-why-behind-tf203015-file-has-an-incompatible-change-while-unshelving-a-shelve-set
I had what appeared to be the same issue but I had created a branch after shelving my changes and I wanted to unshelve those changes to the new branch.
TFS cannot unshelve to a different path than the path upon which the shelf was created.
Solution: I unshelved back to the original branch then I used beyond compare to merge the changes from my original branch to the new branch and checked in.
It could also be that after you create a folder in say a "Test" and you want to merge from dev to test, that you do not have that newly created folder structure checked into TFS - You will /can also get this error message.
Thus this message error CAN occur without anything to do with SHELVESETS as well for others coming from google and finding this page.
This might be the same as jcolebrand's answer, but I'm afraid I found the phrasing there a bit abstruse. Sincere apologies if I'm just repeating.
In my scenario the incompatible pending change message was presented because I was trying to roll back multiple changesets, and the same file was affected by more than one of those changeset.
In my case I did not want to commit until all the changes had been rolled back. I believe if I had been able to commit after rolling back each changeset, the error would not have happened.
The method which worked for me was as follows:
I opted to roll back one changeset at a time. I found using the command line was actually a more informative way of doing this because it lists all the conflicts, whereas I think the VS UI rollback just lists the first.
While rolling back a changeset, if there was an incompatible pending change, I had to undo my workspace's pending changes for the affected files.
When all the changesets had been rolled back, I had to manually revert the files which had experienced incompatible pending change. Mostly this could be achieved simply by getting a specific version of the file (the "last-known-good" version before all the bad checkins started). But for some files where there had been both desired changes and undesired changes, I got the "last-known-good" and manually applied the good changes to it.
This link resolved my issue:
https://blogs.infosupport.com/the-how-and-why-behind-tf203015-lt-file-gt-has-an-incompatible-change-while-unshelving-a-shelve-set/
The reason was pending change in the same work space create an incompatible change. So undo the pending changes and try unshelve. This should resolve the issue.
If you have two branches MAIN(target) and DEV(source), now you want merge DEV into MAIN, then all files you want merge from your source, must not be older then the similar files in your target branch.
For example: you have an changed file test.cs in your DEV branch, changed at 14.03.2016. In your MAIN branch you have test.cs changed at 15.03.2016. So the target is newer then the source file and you have TF203015.
Solution: navigate in TFS Explorer to the conflict-file and merge it explicit. TFS will open the conflict manager and you can merge the conflicts by hand. Following you can merge the selected changeset.
Remarks: If you have more conflicts, you must navigate to each conflict-file and merge it explicit, so TFS opens the the conflict Manager and you can merge it by hand.

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