We have multiple developers working on the same code base. We also are trying to use SourceSafe (6.0)
When one developer makes code changes to their local copy, we note it in a list of changed objects for this release.
When it's time to compile our next release, we open the "master" copy, update all the changes from SourceSafe to the master copy, then compile.
At this point, all the other developers code is now out of sync with the master copy, and we need to get all the changes pushed downhill to all the developers local copies, so we're all looking at the same version of source at the start of a new release cycle.
Is there a way to have SourceSafe update the local copies with the latest changes, or do we need to do it manually basaed on the list of changed objects (which is what we're doing now...) Please don't tell me to use "Get Latest Version". It only works on one file at a time, and is the process we're using now anyway.
I believe your process is simply incorrect. When your devs get in, just have everyone Get Latest. When your developers want to make a change, have them check out the file. This way, it's one dev working on a single file at a time.
If you want multiple people working on the same file, I'd switch to subversion (there is a vb plugin for it).
There is a reason why the SCC tools work the way they do - it's been tried and tested over the last 20 years.
Related
I am working in the enterprise on Visual Studio 2013 and Team Foundation Server. We have a test source and a production source, and I Get Latest on them both regularly. As there are only a few developers, we make changes directly in test, we don't have personal branches off of test (though when our shop was bigger, we did).
So I opened a file in Test, made a simple change to it, saved it, checked it into test, and published it to production. When I went to merge Test with production, I spawned a merge conflict. I am looking at the "server" version and the "local" version and neither one is correct. The "server" version is the file I edited, minus the edit I just made. That makes sense. But the "local" version is something I haven't seen before, what looks like perhaps an older version that I've never never worked on. Maybe this was my local copy and Get Latest didn't update it. But the local file I edited was exactly what I expected it to be.
So, what could cause that? How do I troubleshoot this problem? All I want is to get the correct version in TFS so it doesn't get blown away later, but I have no idea how to proceed.
This may due to when you do the get latest option, TFS didn't update the workspace correctly.
A clean way to do this, back up your file with changes, undo your pending changes. Delete the old workspace, create a new one. Get latest version from server for both test and production source.
Edit the specific file with changes, check it into the test, and finally do the merge Test with production again.
I have a scenario I am hoping someone will be able to help me think through and determine the best way to handle. The tools I am using are Visual Studio 2013 and TFS.
We had a developer leave our company abruptly, and he has a lot of code changes for a client project which were not yet checked in. We have the code base with his changes locally. We also have the client's TFS server with the latest code. I do not have documentation of his changes, so my goal is to find all the code changes he has made. Keep in mind I also do not have access to his machine, I just have access to the local code base which he was working on, which includes his changes.
I began by comparing his code with the client's code on TFS, and looking for changes. However the client has also made some changes to their code in the 2 months since this developer began working on this project. So within those two months he made some changes locally and the client also made some changes which were checked in on TFS.
When I compare his code to the latest copy of code on the server, I can see the differences, but I can't seem to tell who made the changes. If a method was modified, I see that different versions exist on TFS and in this local code, but I cannot tell who made the change. Did the client make the change to the code, and the newer version on TFS makes my version look out of date? Or did this developer make the change to the code, making the server code look out of date? As the changes done by our developer were not checked in, I do not have a history showing me who made the changes to the code. What would be the best way to determine the changes our local developer made?
So, to sum it up: I have compared his local code to server code, and have seen the differences, but the client has also made changes to code since he acquired it. So the differences between his code and server code could either be due to his changes or client changes, but I don't know which.
I see a few ways which could make your life easier, but it requires you to know which version your developer initially downloaded. With that version (Changeset, Label, Date) you can make a comparison against the local workspace and find all the changes to that version on the server.
Workspace version
You can initiate the diff from the commandline (as well as from Visual Studio, but command lines are much easier to post on Stack Overflow):
tf folderdiff c:\sources "$/TFSProject/Path/To/Sources;C12345" /recursive
/collection:http://your.client.tfsserver.com:8080/tfs/ProjectCollection
/view:different,sourceonly
In the place of C12345 you can either enter the Changeset number that was used to create the workspace on your developer's machine or the label (use Llabelname instead of Cnumber) or the (approximate) date (use D2014-12-20).
This will output a list of files that have changed locally against the version that was used to create the workspace. Now you can list each file individually using:
tf diff c:\sources\changedfile.cs /version:C12345
(or use the same version spec as above if you used Labels or a Date).
There is another option, if the workspace is still registered on the TFS server, and that is to compare against the workspace version:
tf folderdiff c:\sources "$/TFSProject/Path/To/Sources;Wworkspacename;owner" /recursive
/collection:http://your.client.tfsserver.com:8080/tfs/ProjectCollection
/view:different,sourceonly`
Followed by:
tf diff c:\sources\changedfile.cs /version:Wworkspacename;owner
You do not need to own the workspace in order to do this, but the server must still have a record for that workspace on the server. You can try finding the workspace using the command:
C:\Sources\>tf workspaces /owner:avanade-corp\jesse.houwing /computer:jessehouwing
/collection:http://your.client.tfsserver.com:8080/tfs/ProjectCollection
Collection: http://your.client.tfsserver.com:8080/tfs/ProjectCollection
Workspace Owner Computer Comment
----------------------- ------------- ------------ ----------------------------
JESSEHOUWING Jesse Houwing JESSEHOUWING
The example above would lead to:
tf folderdiff c:\sources "$/TFSProject/Path/To/Sources;WJESSEHOUWING;Jesse Houwing" /recursive
/collection:http://your.client.tfsserver.com:8080/tfs/ProjectCollection
/view:different,sourceonly
Create a shelfset
If you do have the option to get access to the system (even if logged on as a different user) you can take ownership of the workspace and create a Shelveset of the changes. You can then unshelve these changes on a more recent workspace and Visual Studio will prompt you to resolve merge conflicts. TFS will know which changes were made by the other party and will try to auto-merge the changes as best it can.
I pressed Alt-E which I mistakenly thought was Merge Changes In Merge Tool, however, that was actually Keep Local Version. Is there a way to go back? Is there a way to find out what was merged, as in what file? Ugh! :(
I have completely stopped working in case I erase something of importance.
I'm using MSVS 2013 Professional.
Here's another possible approach.
If you know what version of the code you started with before you started making your current batch of changes, you can grab a copy of your local workspace files. Then Undo all your Pending Changes. Then delete all the files in your local workspace (in Windows explorer). Then do a Get Specific Version to get back the old version of the files from where you started, then copy-paste in your updated files from your backup copy. Then do a Get Latest. This should retrigger the Merge process.
I don't know a great answer to this problem, but I do know one thing you can do (I hope you don't have a massive amount of pending changes, or this will get tedious).
The problem is that TFS thinks you have now merged the server changes (other devs changes) into your workspace, even though you told it to basically toss them. If you try to check-in now it will blow away other developers changes in TFS.
What you can do is go through each file in your pending changes window, and do a Compare With Latest Version. This will show you the differences between your local file, and the file in TFS. You will notice two types of differences:
the changes you made which you can just skip past.
Changes that other devs made and are on the server, these differences will show up as though you have deleted/undone that code locally
For the changes that other devs made, you will have to manually reapply them in your local workspace before you check-in.
I want to use a versioning system to back up and track my changes but I'm too lazy to check out/check in, merge, commit, etc. I don't want to branch, fork or anything else. I just want to be able to see what files have changes and what my Main() looked like last week.
So I'm looking for an application that will simply take my Visual Studio projects folder and back it up in such a way that all prior versions of the files are preserved so I can not only have a backup, but I can easily see how the file looked at some point in the past without me having to explicitly put it in a repository, update/commit/merge/etc.
Basically what I'm looking for is dropbox's functionality but on my local machine and without the 30 day limitation of prior versions.
Does such an application exist?
As AlexC stated, I highly doubt that the little bit of work you save by not using a version control system explicitly is worth the drawbacks, but anyway:
Simplest idea: Just write a wrapper script that checks out the HEAD of your repository, starts Visual Studio and commits everything to version control after you close it.
Alternatively, just trigger commits every hour. With most VCSes, non-modified files won't show up in the listing of modified files.
I'll try to make this as straight forward as possible.
Currently our team has a VSS database where our projects are stored.
Developers grab the code and place on their localhost machine and develop locally.
Designated developer grabs latest version and pushes to development server.
The problem is, when a file is removed from the project (by deleting it in VS2008) then the next time another developer (not the one who deleted it) checks in, it prompts them to check in those deleted files because they still have a copy on their local machine.
Is there a way around this? To have VSS instruct the client machine to remove these files and not prompt them to check back in? What is the preferred approach for this?
Edit Note(s):
I agree SVN is better than VSS
I agree Web Application project is better than Web Site project
Problem: This same thing happens with files which are removed from class libraries.
You number one way around this is to stop using web site projects. Web Site Projects cause visual studio to automatically add anything it finds in the project path to the project.
Instead, move to Web Application Projects which don't have this behavior problem.
Web Site projects are good for single person developments.
UPDATE:
VB shops from the days gone past had similiar issues in that whatever they had installed affected the build process. You might take a page from their playbook and have a "clean" build machine. Prior to doing a deployment you would delete all of the project folders, then do a get latest. This way you would be sure that the only thing deployed is what you have in source control.
Incidentally, this is also how the TFS Build server works. It deletes the workspace, then creates a new one and downloads the necessary project files.
Further, you might consider using something like Cruise Control to handle builds.
Maybe the dev should take care to only check in or add things that they have been working on. Its kind of sloppy if they are adding things that they were not even using.
Your best solution would be to switch to a better version control system, like SVN.
At my job we recently acquired a project from an outsourcing company who did use VSS as their version control. We were able to import all of the change history into SVN from VSS, and get up and running pretty quickly with SVN at that point.
And with SVN, you can set up ignores for files and folders, so the files in your web projects dont get put into SVN and the ignore attributes are checked out onto each developer's machine
I believe we used VSSMigrate to do the migration to SVN http://www.poweradmin.com/sourcecode/vssmigrate.aspx
VSS is an awful versioning system and you should switch to SVN but that's got nothing to do with the crux of the problem. The project file contains references to what files are actually part of the project. If the visual studio project isn't checked in along with the changes to it, theres no way for any other developer to be fully updated hence queries to delete files when they grab the latest from VSS. From there you've got multiple choices...
Make the vbproj part of the repository. Any project level changes will be part of the commit and other developers can be notified. Problem here is it's also going to be on the dev server. Ideally you could use near the same process to deploy to dev as you would to deploy as release. This leads into the other way...
SVN gives you hooks for almost all major events, where hooks are literally just a properly named batch file / exe. For your purposes, you could use a post-commit hook to push the appropriate files, say via ftp, to the server on every commit. File problems solved, and more importantly closer towards the concept of continuous integration.
Something you may want to consider doing:
Get Latest (Recursive)
Check In ...
Its a manual process, but it may give you the desired result, plus if VS talks about deleted files, you know they should be deleted from the local machine in step 1.