Checking in only parts of files - visual-studio

Is it possible to select which changes in a file you want to check in? For example, I have added two projects to a solution file, but I only want to check in one of them.
Or I have done work in two parts of a file, but only one part is done and ready to check in.
Ideally, I'd like to use the new diff-utility in 2012, and just select the parts I want to check in, but can I do that?

My workaround (in VS2015) is:
Shelve affected Files
Delete Stuff you don't want to check in (maybe via compare with latest version)
Check in
Unshelve shelveset
(In my case than VS-Merge-Tool opens to Restore changes you want (Previous checked in lines was not to merge))

Unfortunately there is no way to do that in TFS natively. TFS will always check in the whole version of the current file and it will force you to save your changes before checking in.
This is possible with Git. Using Git, if you were to do the following:
Add "line 1" to foo.cs
Stage foo.cs via "git add foo.cs"
Add "line 2" to foo.cs
Commit foo.cs
Then only line 1 will be checked into the repository. Furthermore, you can integrate your local git repository using git-tf, a new open-source tool published by Microsoft. You can download that tool here or here. The downside of working with Git right now is that it doesn't have great VS integration.

Related

Using SVN, how do I selectively create a patch file?

I have a codebase with several changes in it that are best split up into several commits.
In git, I would use git add -p to select the changes I wanted from each file and create a commit and pull request based on those.
I'm new to SVN and I'm wondering about the best way to achieve this? It looks like I can do file-level selection, but not changes within those files?
I'm using TortoiseSVN as my local version control tool, but I'm happy to use another tool (has to run on Windows) if there's one that will do what I want.
This is something you won't get from SVN. Separating changes in your working area into multiple commit can only have a file granularity. You can't split changes from the same file into several commits.
So I'd say you should instead give a look at how git-svn works. It allows you to use Git over an SVN repository, with some limitations. You'll use git dcommit to push to the SVN repository for example. You must use a rebasing strategy over merging too. But otherwise, you get colored diffs, stash, rebasing, proper handling of multiple branches, proper formatting of patches by default, etc.
If you already know git, this will give you more, for less annoyance.
It looks like I can do file-level selection, but not changes within those files?
This is easily possible with VisualSVN plug-in for Visual Studio 2017. The feature is called QuickCommit and it helps you partially commit selected changes in a file.
Use the Commit this Block and Commit Selection context menu commands in the Visual Studio editor.
Here is an animated screenshot:

Team Foundation Server: how to split changes to separate check-ins?

I work in Visual Studio on C# project.
I edit some files it that project simultaneously. After some work is done i want to divide all changes to "groups" of changes and commit each group changes to separate commit. Its okay when it comes to files - i include one files, exclude others and all is fine.
But problem appears when some changes are in the single common text file. I'd like to split them to different check-ins by TFS itslf, but as far as i know it is not possible.
So tell me please, is there any way to split changes to distinguish them due development process? For example when i start editing common file i press something button or issue a command. Later, when i have to add changes regarding to another check-in to that file, before these changes are really done, i press another button (another command) and since this moment changes are recording as needed to be commited to another check-in.
I hope you understand what i mean. Sorry for my bad English.
If you are going to make a quick change to a file that has work in progress, you should shelve the changes and revert to the source control version (uncheck the "preserve pending changes" box). Then you can make the changes and check in the file. After that, unshelve your changes (your work in progress) from earlier, VS will merge the changes with your checking and you can carry on.
Since it sounds like you have already made the changes and the file contains code you are ready to check in and code you don't, one thing you can do is to shelve the changes now (but do "preserve pending changes"). Then you can delete any code that aren't ready and check in the file. After check in, you can unshelve your changes.
You might want to consider using branches to isolate your long-running changes; although that has its own set of problems.
You could create another workspace on your computer, and use each workspace for a different task. That way, you can work simultaneously on different tasks on the same file without affecting each-other. When you check-in from one workspace, do a "get latest" on the other workspace and merge the changes there before you check-in the other work.

Git: don't update certain files on Windows

We work with a git respository that has over 20,000 files.
My group maintains local versions of about 100 or so of configuration and source files from this repository. THe original acts as a sort of base that several groups modify and tweak to their own needs (some core things are not allowed to be changed, but front end and some custom DB stuff are different between groups)
So we want to update to the latest version generally, but not have the git update overwrite the files that we keep local modifications for.
The machines we use are windows based. Currently the repository gets cloned to a windows server that then gets checked out/cloned to the development machines (which are also windows). The developers make changes as necessary and recommit to our local repo. The local repo updates against the master daily. We never commit back to the master.
So we want all the files that haven't been changed by our group to update, but any that have been changed (ever) won't get updated.
Is there a way to allow this to happen automatically, so the windows server just automatically updates daily, ignoring those files we keep modifications for. And if we want to add a new file to this "don't update" list its just a right-click (or even a flat file list away). I looked at git-ignore but it seems to be for committing, not for updating.
Even better would be a way to automatically download the vanilla files but have them renamed automatically. For example settings.conf is a file we want to keep changes on generally, but if they modify the way entries in that file are handled or add extra options it would be nice it it downloaded it as settings.conf.vanilla or something so we just run a diff on .vanilla files against ours and see what we want to keep. Though this feature is not absolutely necessary and seems unlikely.
If this cannot be accomplished on a windows machine (the software for windows doesn't support such features), please list some Linux options as well if available. We do have an option to use a Linux server for hosting the local git repo if needed.
Thanks.
It sounds like you're working with a third party code base that's under active development and you have your own customisations which you need to apply.
I think the answer you're looking for is rebase. You shouldn't need to write any external logic to achieve this, except for a job which regularly pulls in the third party changes and rebases your modifications on top of them.
This should also be more correct than simply ignoring the files you've modified, as you won't then accidentally ignore changes that the third party has made to those files (you may sometimes get a conflict, which could be frustrating, but better than silently missing an important change).
Assuming that your local repo is indeed simply a fork, maintain your changes on your own branch, and every time you update the remote repository, simply rebase your local branch on top of those changes:
git pull origin master
git checkout custom_branch
git rebase master
Edit
After you've done this, you'll end up with all the changes you made on your custom_branch sitting on top of master. You can then continue to make your customisations on your own branch, and development of the third party code can continue independently.
The next time you want to pull in the extra changes, you'll repeat the process:
Make sure you're on the master branch before pulling in changes to the third party code:
git checkout master
Pull in the changes:
git pull origin master
Change to your customised branch:
git checkout custom_branch
Move your changes on top of the third party changes:
git rebase master
This will then put all your own changes on top of master again. master itself won't be changed.
Remember that the structure of your repo just comes from a whole set of "hashes" which form a tree. Your branches are just like "post it" notes which are attached to a particular hash, and can be moved to another hash as your branch grows.
The rebase is like chopping off a branch and re-attaching it somewhere else. In this case, you're saying something like "chop off our changes and re-attach them on top of the main trunk".
If you can install a visual tool like GitX, it will really help to see how the branch tags move around when you rebase. The command line is ideal for working with but I find something like GitX is invaluable for getting a handle on the structure of your repo.

TFS Specific Changeset files to be merged with latest version

I am in the following situation:
A Team Member worked on a task which was partially done in few changesets, few months back. These changesets were reverted and many more changes are done on same files in subsequent changesets.
I want to get the latest version of code (which I have taken) and have some option to get the older changesets (even I can merge changesets one by one) and merge it.
Though I find option to changeset GetThisVersion which gives me whole old codebase. I don't find relevant option in Visual Studio 2010. It would be great to have GUI option and not command line one.
Please help. Thanks in advance.
You can get specific version of a file from file history (view or get specific version) or with command line Need command to get a file from TFS without a workspace. But to get a folder (project, solution) state seems to be necessary to have a workspace How to get specific version of folder from tfs without creating a workspace?. I don't think that there is a possibility to merge an old and newer version. When I want to resuscitate some old code I use view in history and copy/paste.

How to Merge Select TFS Changesets into My Workspace without All Previous Changesets Included

I am working on a project with another developer. We are in the process of a major upgrade with lots of breaking changes. The software we are working on is an AddOn to a product, and we are upgrading to work with a new version of the product. He has checked in some breaking changes that will not run in my environment yet because I am still running on the old version of the product. I have checked in some changes on top of those. Is there any way I can retrieve the code such that it includes only the changes up to the point before the breaking changes and also include only my changes after that in my workspace?
If I had not done a "get latest" I would be OK now because I made the changes on my machine so I would have them. But now I need to "get specific version" to take me back before all the breaking changes and somehow merge only my changesets into my workspace. But there seems to be no way to merge changesets into a workspace, only into another tree. I could select only the files that I touched and get the latest versions of those files, but some of the files contain changes from both my changesets and his changesets (and mine are after his).
So what I really want is a way to merge specific changesets into my workspace (without pciking up all the previous changes) to get back to the state I was in before I did "Get Latest". Is there any way to do that?
Looks like there's no good way to do this. Fortunately, I had another branch that represented the changes I wanted (I had only merged my changes I wanted into it). It didn't feel right to just copy the whole tree over my working tree, so I used WinMerge to identify the files that were different and copied just those files over (after a cursory look to confirm that it was a file that included my changes -- there were a few files generated by Visual Studio that were different just because they were in a different path).
So I guess the general solution would be to create a branch in TFS, merge everything you want into it, get a local copy, then copy the results into your workspace. That does leave a mess in TFS, though (how do you completely remove the dummy branch?) Fortunately the branch I had was one we really wanted to keep (we have a build branch separate from teh development branch).
I'm not really sure if this answers your question, but if you select "Get Specific Version..." then you can select a specific changeset.

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