I had a solution containing the following projects:
Web App 01
Server Control Foo
Server Control Bar
Each project has its own directory in the root of the solution directory, directly mirroring the structure of the solution.
I branched the solution, then combined items 2 & 3 into a new project within that solution, then deleted projects 2 & 3. I committed the changeset. The resulting structure in VS2015 solution explorer was this:
Web App 01
Server Control Library
I then merged the branch, and committed this also. Over time, branching and merging has got slower and slower. On inspecting the file structure of my hard drive, and Visual Studio Online, I see this folder structure:
Web App 01
Server Control Foo
Server Control Bar
Server Control Library
Despite Solution Explorer not listing the deleted projects, the folders and files from all my deleted projects remain. Despite their status, they are also being branched every time. Is this the correct behaviour, and is it safe to delete them? If so, should I delete using VSO, Windows, or VS2015?
I assume you are using TFVC (changeset, branched the solution).
First, delete the projects from solution (right click the project in VS > Remove) just remove the relationship between projects and solution, the projects’ files and folder are still existing in the hard drive. So you need to delete these files and folders from hard drive (file system).
Secondly, these files are still existing in the source control too, because they aren’t marked as deleted if you just remove projects from solution, so check in changes just affect the solution file, it won’t delete files from source control. So you need to delete them from source control and it’s safe.
Steps to delete files:
Go to Source Control Explorer in VS
Right click Folder or file > Delete
Check in changes
BTW, the files still can be restored if you don’t permanently destroy them. (Destroy command), more information, you can refer to this article: Delete or restore files and folders in Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC)
Oddly, source control seems to be holding onto files & projects even though I have deleted the artifacts from the Visual Studio Solution (itself). The GetLatest brings down the correct files (even when I delete the underlying artifacts from my workspace by hand). I have never seen this behavior in other servers...in fact...not even my PERSONAL Visual Studio Online behaves this way.
Now...to delete files...I have to delete things twice: once in the solution & once in TFS.
MY QUESTIONS:
Why is TFS holding onto the files in Source Control?
Is this a setting?
How do we fix this?
This is an internal TFS server & I am not the administrator. They are "new" so I am sure I will have to explain the issue at-length.
FOR EXAMPLE:
It's a normal phenomenon. Team Foundation Server uses your workspace to keep track of what files you have downloaded and what version you have of them. The reason it does this is so that it can maintain your files without a costly sync step. With TFS, when you say "Get latest", you only get the latest version of files that have changed since you last got them.
If you delete a file on the server and check that delete in, then when somebody does a "Get Latest", the file is deleted on their local system as well. It's for keeping the local file system in sync with the servers.
If you want to just delete the folder and files locally, there are two way to achieve it, more detail info please refer the answers in below question:Delete Local Folder in TFS
OK, so one or more of the references required that the solution be in C drive. I cut-pasted the solution from one folder in D drive to another in C, and bam, all TFS bindings went down the drain.
I've changed my workspace local folder to point to my new folder, so I'm not sure why TFS doesn't recognize it. OK, I admit I was working without TFS connection for a period of time, but now I would like to get some changes checked in. But when I go to File -> Source Control -> Advanced -> Change Source Control, it tells me that the Status for my .sln and .proj files are all Invalid.
I've tried unbinding and rebinding projects but this doesn't seem to work.
This is frustrating. Is there any other way than to delete and re-download the entire solution? Or is this a caveat of TFS, is there any file on my hard drive that defines my solution location? It's 10GB worth, I don't want to need to do this every time I move my solution, especially when I actually have all the files on my hard drive.
If I understand you right, you had your sources connected to TFS on your D: drive. For some strange reason you needed to move them to C: drive and you did this by using Windows Explorer (or any other not TFS related tool)? After that you changed your code and now want to check it in to TFS, but it denies it. Right?
The problem is that TFS didn't got any information about your moving and changes you made in the new location. This only works if you used "local workspace" setting when creating the workspace or if you changed your workspace to the new location and checked out the files there.
How I would "fix" this:
Copy/save your current code changes in a temp folder
Open VS/TeamExplorer and create/change your workspace to the location where you want your sources on C:
Do a "Get Latest Version" on your workspace, to download the sources from TFS and to update the workspace in TFS
Checkout all files in your workspace (checkout root folder with recursive option)
Copy your saved code from step 1 into your workspace
check in your changes (check in on root folder of workspace again with recursive option)
your sources are now linked to and stored in TFS
Under "Tools-> Options-> Source Control -> Environment -> Saving/Editing" set the value to check out automatically, so that VS will to the checkout for you automatically when changing a file in VS.
Visual Studio (and possibly TFS) has somehow (I think perhaps during a source control merge) become confused about the path of a project within my solution.
It thinks it is here (example paths for simplicity):
C:\My Projects\ExampleSolution\ExampleProjectWrong\ExampleProjectCorrect.csproj
whereas actually, the project file is located here:
C:\My Projects\ExampleSolution\ExampleProjectCorrect\ExampleProjectCorrect.csproj
I cannot for the life of me get it to recognize the correct location. I have tried:
Removing and re-adding the project from the correct location. An error message comes up saying The project file at C:\My Projects\ExampleSolution\ExampleProjectWrong\ExampleProjectCorrect.csproj could not be found.
Manually editing the .sln file to ensure all references to ExampleProjectCorrect.csproj have the correct paths.
Doing a find in files on the solution directory for both the correct and incorrect paths, to try and track down where studio is hiding the incorrect path.
Deleting the cache directories for VS and TFS
I'm tearing my hair out because I can't recreate the solution as it has near as makes no difference 100 projects in and is tied in to source control with several other developers working on it.
Can anyone point me in the right direction as to where it is storing this incorrect path and/or how to reset it so the damn thing will load correctly?
Go to Manage Workspaces (either through the File/Source Control menu or the workspace drop down in Source Control Explorer)
select edit for your workspace.
You should see, under working folders, a mapping for the source
control directory to the old/wrong project directory.
Select it and click remove.
Close VS and delete the suo file.
It still references the wrong directory. Maybe rebinding might work at this point but I didn't try that. Reload your project and you should be good to go.
Simply deleting the solutions .suo file worked for me.
I was facing this issue after performing a migration from Visual Source Safe 2005 to TFS 2012. I couldn't wait for the "Conversion Wizard" due out in the next couple weeks so I just ran VSSConvert.exe. This took 6 or so years of history and moved it into TFS.. while I didn't get the actual timeline history.. I got a bunch of entries on the same day with the comments indicating the actual check-ins of the history.. not bad.
So after it ran all night (Successfully, yay!), I was having trouble loading my projects just as this question stated. For some reason, a few projects were being referenced to an incorrect directory. I checked the .sln, the .vsproj files, and getting latest, deleting re-getting, adding removing, etc.. I tried everything noted here... even upgrading my workspace, which I'm not sure what that even did.
FINALLY... I deleted the *.suo files and viola. It worked.
I spent a couple hours on this one.
A slightly different solution.
TFS was displaying a non-existing path for a particular Solution. Previously, I had a laptop with a separate D: drive, but now, I just have a C: drive. TFS still thought my project was stored on D:\Project\MikesProject
I didn't have a .suo file to delete, the D: path wasn't mentioned anywhere in my Workspaces (buried away under the File\Source Control\Advanced\Workspaces menu), TFS showed that I did have the latest files in my (no-longer-existant) D: directory, and TFS in VS2013 didn't have a "Remove Mappings" option for this project.
But what did work was to simply do a "Get latest version" on the project.
After doing so, a fresh copy of the code was written to my C: drive, and (interestingly), now the Local Path was shown underlined.
Previously, the D: path wasn't shown like this.
Odd. Very odd.
We've had similar issues with moves and renames.
Deleting the local directories and then getting again solved it.
Even after deleting the .suo file and .vs folders, I had to edit the .sln file and remove the old relative url from SccProjectName# despite the SccLocalPath# being correct. Apparently VS also uses the name as a hint path.
Try to delete or rename .suo file (including extension). This file is at the same location where your solution file is. It worked for me.
Just guessing, but perhaps some of your other projects references your project from the wrong location? In this case, you have not just to delete and re-insert the project into your solution, you will also have to delete and recreate the references from the referencing projects (stored in their .csproj files).
After trying many recommendations I deleted the suo file ( again ). The last time worked. Why it did not work earlier I do not know. In general I find deleting the suo file one of the first steps I do.
I had my asp.net website solution opened from my Dev Branch.
Then for some other purpose I opened same solution from Main branch.
I made a change to one of my .ascx.cs file in the dev branch and set breakpoint. When I ran the debugger, all my break points were hit in the Dev Branch except for the .ascx.cs which was hitting the Main branch. Have not idea.
Tried cleaning the Temporary folder but didn't work.
What worked:
Closed all instances of Visual Studio
Opened the solution from Dev branch again.
Run again and the break points started hitting.
In my case i copied the *.sln file into the project folder and changed the path to project into the *.sln file. Only this resolved the problem (vs 2015 sp1, winservise project).
Delete *.suo does not helps for me.
Yet another solution worked for us - after trying the delete of suo and almost everything mentioned in this thread. We had a project in the solution which was showing a ghost version of the csproj file. We deleted that file and our paths fixed on another project we were trying to add.
Deleting obj and bin files would solve the problem...
I know it is an old line. I just went through the same problem. We recently migrate the TFS, so I created a new workspace to map to new server and kept the old one. Every time when I open a solution which is supposed to target to my new workspace, VS always tried to load projects from my old mapping directory, till I removed my old workspace.
SourceSafe Related Error message I got in Visual Studio 2010 when I tried to edit a file:
File is already checked out by the current user in a different location
Background:
For some reason source safe saved the files 3 directories deep.
For Example, The solution files were located in: VS2010Apps\CCP_Utility\CCP_Utility\CCP_Utility\
The solution files should be in the root directory: VS2010Apps\CCP_Utility
I moved the files to VS2010Apps\CCP_Utility to create this error and now I can't edit my project....
Question:
How can I edit my files again and keep the correct directory structure???
Do I Just delete the source safe files and re-add it to source safe or what?
It sounds like VSS is expecting those files in a particular directory. To solve this:
find and make the path that VSS is expecting; the one with ccp_utility x 3.
check-in (all files) to VSS.
if you don't care about version history at this point, delete the project from VSS.
disconnect/unbind your solution from version control.
make the directory layout on disk as you need.
drag & drop the root folder of your new layout on disk into VSS Explorer. Suggest make it a brand new path (aside your old project) in VSS, to avoid any complications.
you now have a 'new project' as far as VSS is concerned.
ensure your bindings are correct, and you should be able to continue as per normal.
This happened to me when my work machine was replaced and I had forgotten to check in some files on my old machine before the change. My local copy of the file was the one I wanted to work with, but VSS had it marked as checked out on a different machine [my old machine].
I just opened the Source Safe Client, browsed to the affected files and checked them in: the client asks if I wish to proceed using the local file (Yes) - then just reloaded the project in Visual Studio.