I currently have a TFS 2010 Server running on SERVER-1. On my client (MY-CLIENT) I have VS2010 running and have a workspace associating SERVER-1 with \MY-CLIENT\Development. All is good.
I was playing around with setting up a different instance of TFS on SERVER-2. On my client, I deleted the original SERVER-1 workspace and created a new workspace associating SERVER-2 with \MY-CLIENT\Development. All is good.
Having finished my experiments with TFS on SERVER-2, I re-imaged the machine (deleting the TFS Server on SERVER-2).
I then went back to my client machine, reconnected to TFS on SERVER-1 and attempted to remap source control to my Development folder. However, am now receiving the error "The path \MY-CLIENT\Development is already mapped in workspace MY-CLIENT;SERVER-2\Steve." Now I have a problem.
So, I gather from this that I should have first deleted the SERVER-2 workspace BEFORE re-imaging the machine. Unfortunately, I did not do that.
Poking around in some forums, I realize that I can use a command line tool to perhaps delete it:
tf workspace /delete MY-CLIENT;SERVER-2\Steve
However, when I run this, I get a message indicating that "Team Foundation services are not available from server http://SERVER-2:8080/tfs/development."
So the question, then, is how do I force deletion of the SERVER-2 workspace on my client so that I can re-create my old SERVER-1 workspace?
The working folder mappings for all the local workspaces is stored in the version control cache file. This allows you to bootstrap TFS clients, allowing them to locate the server information for a given local folder. In addition, it will provide the information for this test you're seeing, that prevents a local folder from being mapped to two different servers.
In order to clean this up (without trying to connect to the server), you can use the tf workspaces command (note the pluralization - the workspaces command operates on the list of workspaces, the workspace command operates on a workspace and generally requires connectivity to the server that workspace is located on.
To delete all workspaces for your deleted project collection, you can do:
tf workspaces /remove:* /collection:http://server-2:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection
(Obviously replacing the project collection URI with the URI for your deleted server.)
I had exactly the same issue: After moving TFS server to another machine, I couldn't map to a local folder in VS2012 on the old machine because it was still associated with an old Workspace that TFS denied all existence of. After many hours (and days) searching Google and trying different things, none of which worked (including all the "tf" commands, deleting the local cache etc), this is how I eventually solved it:
Edit the actual TFS collection database on the TFS server using SQL Management Studio Express (e.g. "Tfs_DefaultCollection")
Look for the "dbo.tbl_Workspace" table and edit it
You should see your "ghost" workspace(s) in here
Delete the rows
All is right in the world
The workspaceowner parameter on the delete command is optional. Can you issue the delete without that parameter, or will that damage another MY-CLIENT workspace?
Related
I started using TFS since VS2010. By that time I already created my own TFS server (myname.visualstudio.com). My problem is that I created a new project on the my TFS website (the one with the dashboards). Then when I go to VS2017, and connect to that new project, it asks me to map and get it as expected. Instead of just clicking "Map & Get" button, I instead clicked advanced so that I can configure everything.
On the workspace configuration dialog, I noticed that VS names it as "MYPCBLABLA_1". If I try to remove the "_1", VS says that "the workspace blablabla already exists on computer blablabla", and does not let me use my existing workspace name.
Why does it do so? Can I not use only 1 workspace? From what I understand of workspaces, it is the container of my projects, so different workspace, different set of projects. But what are they really?
Additional info:
I don't know if this helps but on the past, I used to format my PC many times, I'm not sure if that affects the mappings or workspace names when I use VS after reformatting.
Workspaces are maybe the least well-understood feature in TFVC. And you are right in saying they're a way to isolate different sets of files from a TFVC repository.
A lot of people configure a new workspace for a specific project or set of solutions, but let's look at some of the ways workspaces can be used in detail:
Hotfixes: you may need to create a hotfix for something happening now, but you have pending changes in your existing workspace. Instead of shelving these changes, performing a "Get Specific version" on the bugged version, you can also create a new workspace in which to solve this particular problem. After completing the fix you can then continue working with the other workspace without needing to do anything.
Experiments: you may want to do some major refactoring, restructure source control or some other highly impactful operation. Doing this in a new (temporary) workspace helps you prevent messing up your normal work area.
Reviewing other peoples changes: When performing a review on another person's changes, you may want to have a local copy so you can run, annotate and play with the other person's code. Instead of taking these changes into your own workspace, you can easily bring these into a temporary workspace, which you can safely delete afterwards.
Performing a merge, while you are working on other changes: It may be the case that you're working on a new feature an already have some changes merged back to another branch when a release needs to be shipped. In order to prepare this release, without picking up changes or overwriting work in progress in your current workspace, it's often easier to perform these kinds of release activities in a temporary workspace, that way you know that the work is always done on the exact version in source control.
Preventing accidental changes to important branches: By putting your production branch in a separate workspace, you can't accidentally combine changes from say Development and Main into a single check-in. Since Visual Studio often auto-selects all pending changes in the workspace, this may cause unintended changes to your master/main branch. I've written a Check-in policy to prevent these issues, but having separate workspaces is a much safer solution.
Working with multiple developers on the same workstation/server: in some organisations, developers use a remote desktop to a central beefy server to do changes. To ensure each developer has his own set of files, each developer gets his/her own workspace. An alternative is to make the workspace public, which allows multiple developers to use the same workspace folder. But this often leads to all kinds of unexpected issues.
Browsing an old version of the code: if you need to review/compare an older version to a new one, you can often get away with the folder diff view in Visual Studio, but if you need to do more thorough comparisons, you may want to have 2 copies of the same folder in your TFVC repo. Creating two workspaces will allow you to have two different versions of the same folder on your local disk.
Prepare a special version for merges or labels: You can merge and label the workspace version of a set of files. You can create a workspace and then use Get Specific Version to fetch specific versions of specific files, these can all come from different changeset versions. Once you're satisfied, you can perform the label or merge or branch action to store this specific workspace version configuration on the server.
As you can see, Workspaces allow you to do parallel development on one machine, isolate changes etc.
Be creative
As you can see, workspaces are a very powerful concept. Usable for a lot of operations. But you need to understand the concept thoroughly. Many developers don't understand exactly what workspaces are and how they work, they're missing out of some of the most powerful concepts of TFVC.
Consolidating and cleaning up
In your case you now have two workspaces. In order to consolidate these (if you want to), you can unmap the folders from your _1 folder and then map these same folders in your original workspace. You can also delete the _1 workspace from the TFS Server and then update the mappings of the original workspace.
Remember that workspaces are stored on your local machine, but that the TFS server also has a registry of who mapped which TFVC folders to which workstations. So simply deleting files from your local disk is not sufficient. You need to save these changes to the TFS server (this happens automatically after performing a get operation after changing the mappings).
To check which workspaces are registered to your workstation on the TFS server, use:
tf vc workspaces /computer:YOURWORKSTATIONNAME
Then delete old workspaces with
// DELETE the local workspace
tf vc workspace /delete:WORKSPACENAME
// DELETE the workspace registration on the TFS server
tf vc workspaces /remove:WORKSPACENAME
To prevent the creation of a new workspace by VS, I:
Create a local folder to which I’ll map the content of the remote repository;
In VS, connect to the remote repository;
In VS, open Source Control Explorer and navigate to the content I need; VS will show a “not mapped message”.
Click on that message and map locally.
This guarantees that no other workspace will be created, and the current one will be used.
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
I suddenly have begun encountering an error similar to "E:\Websites\Stage\mywebsite\somefile.ascx: Access to the path is denied" on a multitude of my local files when attempting to check them in. The files it is failing on are all sorts of files, PNG, ASPX, CONFIG, etc.
I am using Visual Studio 2013 for Web (Update 4) and the visualstudioonline.com TFS.
The files are stored on a network location and I have a drive mapped to that location. I can manually open, manipulate, and save any of the files that error so I do not believe it is truly a permissions issues.
This setup has worked for months but suddenly it is giving me problems.
I ran a powershell script on the folder Get-ChildItem -Include *.* -Recurse -Path 'E:\Websites\Stage' | select fullname,isreadonly and all the files return 'False' under the isreadonly column. No errors are returned.
I am in need of some further ideas.
I found a workaround in another StackOverflow question.
Essentially, you shelve the pending changes, then you commit it. No need to unshelve them.
I would only suggest to use that to check-in your changes until you set another workspace locally (or someone fixes that issue).
As many other, using Visual Studio 2013 from within a VM having a local workspace located on the host computer mapped through a shared drive was working well before updating to "VS2013 update 4".
That setup was suggested to me with the reasoning that if the VM crashes, then I wouldn't loose my changes.
Storing your local workspace on a network location is not supported and should never be done.
Have a 'local' (physically on your local machine) workspace where you edit the files and check in. Then have an automated build that publishes the files to a location of your choice.
I ran Windows/Visual Studio in Parallels on a Mac and had a project saved to my desktop (yes, shame on me). Internally this path is handled as \\psf\Home\Desktop even if it is stored locally and not in the network. Still gives the same exception and is solved by moving it to your regular drive (c:\...)
Following on from my previous question ( Watin does not work on my TFS build machine ), I have made my TFS build an interactive process.
I do however, get the following error when I run the build:
The working folder d:\Build\Sources is already in use by the workspace 8_1_appsdev_build;myUserAccount$ on computer myComputerName.
After some research, it seems that I need to delete my workspaces. If tried to list my workspaces with the following command, but the results indicate that I do not have any workspaces. Not sure what I am missing. Any ideas?
View workspaces command:
tf workspaces /computer: myComputerName /owner:*
No workspace matching *;* on computer myComputerName found in Team
Foundation Server http://myComputerName:8080/tfs/production.
Thanks!
You can find and delete the workspace by opening Visual Studio on build servers with same account or by using workspace sidekicks from TFS Sidekicks tool.
You don't necessary have to delete the workspace, something apparently going wrong here.
The message is just telling you that you attempt to create a new workspace with a mapping that is already used by another workspace.
For instance:
WorkspaceA already exists, it has one mapping: $\ to c:\pipo
Any attempt to create a WorkspaceB with a mapping that use c:\pipo (or a subfolder) will failed.
Maybe you create a previous Build Definition that use the same local path as the one you're trying to run: this will fail the same way.
To sum up there's per default one Workspace per Build Definition with the ability to make it persistent or not (mainly for speed optimization during the get of files), make sure two build definition don't use the same path in local.
tf workspaces looks at the workspace cache file to provide output. If you're running tf as yourself, you will only see workspaces that you have connected to. Thus, you would not see the build user's workspaces (regardless of the /owner option, which simply acts as a filter.)
Either run tf workspaces as the build user, or use the /collection argument to force a query of the workspaces on the server, bypassing the cache.
I got new working machine and because our TFS server is located very far from jobsites I want to avoid downloading all source codes again (several GBs) so want to move my old workspace to new one. I have copied all projects via LAN and Working folders list in Workspaces is empty in VS on new machine.
So how to move all items from old workspace to new one without adding them manually and downloading all the data again?
It's super easy to migrate your workspaces from an old machine, given your exact scenario. See this other thread on Stackoverflow:
Import Visual Studio TFS workspaces
Shelve everything in your workspace and unshelve it to the new computer. When you create the shelfset, make sure that "Preserve pending changes locally" is not checked.
This will, effectively move the workspace from one computer to another.
** Update based on question being updated **
I don't think there's an easy way for you to do what you are wanting to do within a workspace. Instead, you should be looking at the TFS Proxy. When you implement the proxy, it sits between your workstation and the TFS repository, and helps proxy gets, check-outs, and check-ins to help speed up your interaction with TFS.