Me and 2 colleagues are using TFS and VS 2013 on a shared project. Me and my Colleague "Bill" are able to edit files and check them in whenever we like. But colleague "Bob" cannot do this. They appear as "locked" in his solution unless he goes into TFS and specifically checks out the file. Me and Bill dont need to do this, we can simply edit the files and if we both try and check in the same file it notifies us of merges. Bob has the same TFS permissions as us, and as far as I can see the same visual studio settings.
Any ideas on what might be causing this?
This sounds like a workspace issue.
Bob needs to change his workspace from a server workspace to a local workspace. If he's using VS2010 or earlier, he will not have that option -- local workspaces are only supported in VS2012 or later.
Here's an MSDN link on how to configure local workspaces:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2012/10/05/set-local-workspaces-as-default-when-upgrading-to-tfs-2012.aspx
Related
I have a couple of ASP.NET Core based projects being developed using Visual Studio 2019.
I am having issues where my workspace and TFS server on Azure-DevOps are out of sync. My PC contains the most recent code and I want to push everything I have on the server. I don't really care about the status of the TFS server as it is wrong. I just want to force everything to get pushed to ensure my PC and TFS are syncing again.
How can I force the TFS on Azure-DevOps to take all my files? I don't even mind removing the project altogether from Azure-DevOps and push all files as if this is a new project.
According to your description, sounds like there is something wrong with your source control binding. Or maybe some files outside of Visual Studio do not detect by TFS server. Which cause your workspace and TFS server out of sync.
If you want TFS server detect changes done to files outside of Visual Studio, the simplest way is using local workspace.
Now anything else changes files outside Visual Studio, your workspace detects the changes automatically.
It also detects adds or deletes but you have to include them to your Pending Changes manually with the link under `Excluded Changes
If you are using server workspace, this is kind like when you are offline, you cannot work with your local files because they are read-only until you check them out. So highly recommend you switch to local workspace, you just need to make sure you open the files in VS from a path which the same as your TFS local worksapce. Then it will auto sync changes in Visual Studio and show in pending changes.
More detailed information on the pros and cons of local and server workspaces, please refer our official link.
Now in your situation, we suggest you fist back up all of your local codes/files first. Then delete your old workspace, create a new local workspace.
Get latest from your sever, then copy all your back up to your workspace folder. Then let windows file system auto detect the difference between them, replace files download from server with your back up local version.
Now your local workspace should contain the latest version of your code/file, Visual Studio will auto detect the changes and list them in pending changes, if something added in excluded list, manually promote them.
Finally you could just check in/push all pending changes to TFS server. Now everything back to the track again.
Hope this helps.
Me - Front End web developer with an ok working knowledge of writing VB.NET code but I have never built a .NET project from scratch using Visual Studio.
External developer - Experienced VB.NET developer but completely new to version control and TFS. Also extremely cheap and prone to infuriatingly poor programming practices. He does things that make you bang your head on the table.
Background
Our external developer has coded our site but over the last few years I have been tweaking aspects of pages and have managed to learn quite a bit of VB.NET along the way. He has never used source control and I don't think he's ever had to work with another developer before.
Up until now he has maintained a local copy of the website. He makes changes to this local copy and when he wants us to test it he uploads the relevant files to our dev server. I have no experience of Visual Studio projects/solutions so if I have made tweaks to things I have edited the aspx/asxh/config files in my preferred editor and then uploaded them to the dev server. If everything works correctly I ask him to download them from the server so he can update his local copy.
I have been maintaining a local git repository of the website for the last 2 years. If he makes a change I check it in.
Obviously this is a nightmare to work with so we have now insisted that he starts using version control. I recommended GIT but he has decided to use TFS.
He has now put his solution and all the files into TFS. I have installed Visual Studio 2015 and successfully connected to TFS. I have mapped the files from source control to my own workspace but I am now at a loss as to what to do next.
Questions
As soon as I open the .sln file he has uploaded it says I have checked out the file and made changes. When I check the diff it seems to be because I am using a newer version of Visual Studio than he is. Does the .sln file need to be in version control? Or are we suppose to maintain our own versions of the .sln file and simply check in everything else?
If I try and build the project it fails because the web.config is set up for his machine and not mine. How can we maintain 3 versions of the web.config file? One for my local, one for his, and one for our dev/live environments?
I am not convinced he will have added the project to TFS correctly because he's never used it before. This is basically the blind leading the blind.
Question 1:
You need to put the .sln file in version control. Before check out the .sln file, please do a "get latest" step, which will make sure both of you are working on the latest version. When you try to check your local version in the server, and he had uploaded his local version in the server. You may have to solve conflicts before the check in.
Question 2:
You should build your project and published the website on the server. The build agent will only maintain one version of the web.config file. If he has built the project with his web.config. And you want to build the project again with your web.config, the build agent will delete the previous web.config and pull down your version. Then build the project with your's web.config.
Moreover, if both of you are not similar with TFS. Suggest you taking a look at below MSDN link which related to source control and build.
Use Team Foundation Version Control
TFS Vnext Build
I'm desperate to fight against this problem: when I enable nuget on a solution and it grabs missing packages from web, it constantly tries to check-in them to TFS, although I definitely don't want it
There's a lot of advices on the web regarding this problem, but none has helped so far. I've done the setup according to this: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/workflows/using-nuget-without-committing-packages, tried to "cloak them" as it is recommended here: http://www.xavierdecoster.com/post/2011/10/17/tell-tfs-not-to-add-nuget-packages-to-source-control - all in vain. I'm stuck. Probably I lack some critical understanding of how does TFS client work with NuGet and VS 2010.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
The only way I know is a little bit manual but can be automated at some point.
The big issue is the packages folders being overcrept. You can undo the packages in Visual Studio, the files won't be deleted. There is also a CLI for that:
C:\project\Main\packages> tf undo /recursive *
Do not use this command when you have pending changes on the repositories.config file.
You just need a little .bat file to check for pending changes (repositories.config file) and do the cleaning.
I've given up an any NuGet / Solution based approach to this problem.
I simply setup my workspace so that the packages are cloaked.
For example setting up your workspace like this means Packages is ignored by Source control:
Status Server Path Local Path
Active $/TFS/ C:\Code
Cloaked $/TFS/Packages
Even cloaking the packages folder as DaveShaw suggests can still cause problems, especially when adding packages to large solutions. Best way I've found so far is to create another Visual Studio configuration...
devenv /RootSuffix NoTFS
and then delete the TFS provider for that configuration
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0NoTFS_Config\SourceControlProviders\{4CA58AB2-18FA-4F8D-95D4-32DDF27D184C}
I'd suggest exporting that part of the registry before deleting and make sure you delete it from the NoTFS configuration.
After that you can run Visual Studio when you want without with TFS by starting it with the RootSuffix parameter above.
i have used TF.exe (Team Foundation Client) to checkout files from outside with the following command.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/noahc/archive/2007/01/22/real-tfs-command-line-help.aspx
tf checkout $project/filename
but, i need to checkout from outside when TFS server is also not reachable. In visual studio, it prompts us to work offline and then later on, it sync automatically with the changes into server when it goes online. How do i acheive the same from tf.exe or any other way to do it.
PS: i do have real requirement of editing some files which is not belongs solution files which gets modified from outside of visual studio. as of now,i am using tf checkout method to checkout the file from outside. but, this require connection TFS server all the time.
You can't do this with the command-line tools, because the offline mode is a feature of Visual Studio, not of TFS.
The tools always work directly with the TFS, so it must be online and reachable at that time.
Amendment regarding your P.S.: What Visual Studio does in Offline mode is just setting the local files to writable and "remembering" with which files it did that. Then, on going online again, it checks for any changes in the meantime. If there were any, it starts a merge process, if there weren't, it checks out the file without getting it.
There's no reason why you couldn't do this same process by hand, it's just more comfortable through VS.
BTW: Why not have a Solution for this "dangling files"? Just create an emtpy solution and add them as Solution Items. This way you can use the VS offline mode.
It seems that when I use a tool (such as winmerge) to update my codebase... my Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) integration with Team Foundation Server (TFS) doesn't seem to pick it up.
How do I know which files to check out and check back in? Is there something I am missing? Is this a feature that isn't part of VSTS & TFS?
First, this is probably because the files have not yet been checked out. If you do that first before running your update, TFS will see those changes.
Second, you can use TFS Power Tools (available from MS) to review local repository for changes that are not recognized. If there are found differences, power toys resets the status of the file so Pending Changes window sees the change. this does not require you to check-out the files, it will do that for you if there are differences.
Pretty nifty.
Power Tools for 2008 is here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15836
and you are looking for the "Online" command:
"Online Command - Use the online command to create pending edits on writable files that do not have pending edits."
I assume you are applying changes across an entire project, outside of VS.
You will have to check-out the complete project first, then apply the changes and check back in. Unmodified files will not be actually checked-in, AFAIK.
Your question sound like as if you have not installed the Team Foundation Server Client.
If you have installed the Visual Studio Team System edition you are able to connect with the Team Foundation Server. But to have the integration working you need to install the Team Foundation Server Client as well.
After having done this your Visual Studio should inform you in case of file changes and then automatically check out the files.