I have various solutions checked in to a VSTS online account.
Sometimes I have the need to create a new solution from a copy of the code of another, and then to check this back in to VSTS to work on as a separate project.
Is there an easy way to do this in Visual Studio?
In Source Control Explorer there is the Move option, but why not a Copy option?
(I am not talking about branching)
Move is a in effect a combined operation done atomically by TFS. Its essentially a delete and rename. It also retains history.
The following image shows moving a file and then moving it back. You can see the change to see what TFS did to the file.
If you are talking about taking code files from one location and copying to another, it's essentially a local file level operation. From a TFS point of view, it would be simply an "add" operation that you would need to do explicitly.
Copy does not make much sense when using a source control system.
As suggested by others you can make a branch, as this will give you the result you want. This could be seen as a copy, besides it not taking up space for the duplicated files.
Related
Our TFS is not set up to be used in the traditional way since we moved it from Visual Source Safe which had a user\project hierarchy. Now I need to do a Move command to give another user a project that he is taking over from me and I want to use Move so it will preserve history. I understand that the parent of what you are moving must have mapping set up in order to get the option to Move activated and I've done that but it gives an error when attempting the move.
I hope the picture gives a better understanding. Help! Please!
Unfortunately, the 'Move' option will only move source files without their history information. TFS doesn't provide any feature to move items with history. You could use some other tools like TFS Integration tool.
Actually, when you use the 'Move' option to move, TFS first copy your files to your target place then delete the original files, so it looks like a migration.
That's why the history can't be seen after moving. The old history is still under the original place.
In addition, when you 'Move', the parent folder should be mapped and the target place folder should also be mapped.
I have a situation where a developer made mass changes to a project outside of TFS (long story), and now we want to put those changes back into TFS (files added, removed, renamed).
Of course, TFS is not like Git; if I check out the project, then delete the files from the workspace and copy over the new files, TFS won't adapt to those changes.
I have discovered that I can do a Compare from File - Source Control, and that the Compare screen allows me to mark files as added/deleted. This helps, but is a slow process for a large project, and quite prone to human error.
So, my question is: Is there an automated way to get TFS to simply add all new files and remove all deleted ones?
I don't care about tracking history of renamed files--they can be
considered "removes" and "adds."
I have tried unbinding and rebinding the workspace; this did not work for me (or I didn't do it correctly).
I am using VS 2015, TFS 2015, and I have the TFS Power Tools.
If you are using a Local Workspace then you should be able to get latest on the workspace, then copy over all the new files in Windows Explorer which will generate pending changes and file adds.
If you go into Pending Changes in Team Explorer you will have lots of detected changes for new files etc. but you can promote them to included changes.
This isn't going to deal with file renames or deletions though so it might not be the best solution.
Alternatively you could use Reconcile Changes in Version Control
In Source Control Explorer, right-click a folder, and then click Compare.
In the Compare dialog box. select the folder versions to compare.
In the Folder Difference window, right-click the folder or file you want to reconcile, and click Reconcile.
This will allow you to choose what to add or change to version control
You might try using tfpt online. I would add the /adds /deletes /diff /recursive flags as well.
I think in almost any case you will have some conflicts/manual work to do here.
There is a blog post on a possibly similar situation that used tfpt online as well: Discover File Changes Made Outside of Visual Studio
Since I did not get to try the above suggestions, I'll post the workaround I did, in case it helps anybody else. Hopefully, the above suggestions are better than what I ended up doing.
Make sure nothing is checked out
Open solution
Team - Go Offline
Close solution
Windows Explorer - Copy latest source folder into the current source folder (Windows Explorer will do a Merge).
VS - Open solutin, select solution file
File - Source Control - Advanced - Change Source Control
if you get a message about unloaded projects, make sure all projects loaded. Click "Reload" on those that didn't.
Shift to select all project, click Bind
Do a Compare in Source Control Explorer. Manually add all new files. Manually delete all deleted files. Frown.
In order to clean up my project structure, I moved a folder into another (new) folder through the TFS Power Tools Shell-Extension (Rename/Move).
After checking the history at the new place, the move is the only entry. (I tried one folder up, down, even on single files in the moved folder.. same result.)
I had also put on some labels on versions of the folder before the move, since there were some important states of the code I wanted to get back to.
So.. what went wrong, and how can I either get the history or at least find out the label names again and check out those versions?
Turns out it is pretty easy.
In Visual Studio 2010, go to Tools->Options. There you can find the option to show "deleted" items (roughly in the middle of the dialog box). The old folder got deleted during the move - it will be displayed again after activating that option. (They will be kind of grayed with a red cross.)
Labels seem to have disappeared, though, so I had to go by version.
In the Source Explorer you have the normal operations again - like View History or Get.
DISCLAIMER: For reference of everyone that gets here, this answer is not fixing #Andreas problem, just giving some context on why this happens and offering a couple of workarounds.
Seems that losing history when moving folders in TFS 2010 is not a bug, is a "feature". (still happening in TFS2012. From this MSDN link you can read official Microsoft answer:
Thanks for the feedback here. The previous comment about this being by design is correct, and there is an option on the command line. In the UI, history of folders is recursive - always. This is because most of the time, users care about the history of the contents of the folder. Files on the other hand dont have the concept of recursive history - you always see the history for the file itself. Now, from the command line, there is an option to show recursive history (/r) and if you run tf history on a folder without the recursive option, you'll see the changes to the folder itself. This would include changes such as a rename for the folder itself.
Workaround to get history once lost: As you can see there, you have a workaround using tf history.
Workaround to avoid losing history: If you want to avoid losing history in folders instead of using move feature, you can use TFS Integration tool to migrate code from one folder to other preserving history, migrating from $/TFSCode/FolderA to $/TFSCode/FolderB. It is a little bit overkill but if the history is pretty important for you is much better than looking for it in deleted folders
It is true that the folder history is lost, but the individual file history is actually not lost. It is hidden under the little "expand me" arrow at the far left on a file history line. Expand it on the oldest history entry for a file, or anywhere you see it, and you will see history of that individual file also from an old location that no longer exists.
At the top of History window you can edit Source location, put the old name and get the full history before it has been moved.
Also, is good to mention that you can get the full history back by moving/rename the branch back to the old location/name.
I have been using SourceGear vault for some personal projects and Team Foundation Server for work projects. One thing TFS is missing is a simple feature that Vault has on its check in dialog window.
In the Vault client, you can see if the checked out file changed from the previous version checked in. Here is a screen shot. Notice the column "Details"? That tells you there is a difference. The way this is super helpful is if you have to check out a entire project because you are going to do code re-generation. I'll check out my class library project and then regenerate my CodeSmith templates. Doing this may result in just a few specific files from changing. When I view the pending check-in screen, I see the files that really changed and I can compare to see the impact.
SO... can TFS do this? Maybe there is a 3rd-party tool that will do it for me? Is there a TFS SDK or PowerTool that I have to get. Anyone want to build it?
Select all the files in "Pending changes" window and activate the context menu. Then click "Undo..." > "Undo Changes" > "No to All".
The files without changes will be rolled back.
Per this page, you can run this command from the Visual Studio Command Prompt.
tfpt uu /noget /r *
You'll need to have TFS Power Tools installed for this to work. Also, make sure you browse to the root of your mapped folder within the command prompt (ie - C:\TFS for example).
TFS Power Tools links (if you don't already have it)
TFS Power Tools for 2010
TFS Power Tools for 2012
There is no need to undo the unchanged files, as TFS will notice they're unchanged upon checkin and will only associate the truly changed files. Any files checked out but unchanged are reverted to their last known checked in version and will not be associated with your checkin. It is impossible in TFS (though not very clearly documented) to check in an unchanged file. It will always revert to the previous version if there are no changes.
You can quickly undo your unchanged files by calling 'tfpt.exe uu /r' from the command line (you need to have the Team Foundation Power tools for this) or by using the "Undo unchanged" button in the Pending changes window. This removed any items from the list that are unchanged immediately. So that you can see exactly what you're checking in.
Though it might be that this option is added by the Team Foundation Power Tools or the TFS Source Control Explorer Extensions (which are a must have for every TFS user anyways).
See also:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/2100981/736079
https://stackoverflow.com/a/6387656/736079
https://jessehouwing.net/vsts-tfs-why-i-like-them/
I don't like answering my own questions, but it looks like there might not be a real Microsoft solution out there. For me, this is how I handle the problem at the office using Visual Studio.
Before I re-generate the business objects, I make a copy of the entire folder structure
I check out the entire project or the root generated folder
I start the code generator. Sometimes, I know exactly what is changing, but other times, I might make a lot of changes and I don't want to miss anything. My code generator at work also generates all the SQL files needed to DROP / CREATE stored procedures.
Using SourceGear DiffMerge, I compare the folders of the just generated and the previously backed up folder.
This is pretty time consuming. I never thought of it as a problem until I saw Vault identifying that a file was different on disk from the repository.
Maybe you all can say how you do code generation / regeneration when working with a source control repository.
I work in a corporate development environment where many developers may be working on the same file, and we have TFS as our source control as well. In our document of Best Practices for TFS, we really discourage checking out files that the developers don't intend on changing, that way we naturally exclude files without differences when submitting a changeset.
To answer your question, I normally just look at the "Pending Changes" window and run a Compare on the "changed" files that I'm unsure of--the Compare tool should immediately tell you if your local copy is the same as the server copy. Unfortunately, there's no real workaround other than what I suggested, but I don't see the scenario where I absolutely must check out an entire project branch for editing.
I have a Project on CodePlex which is using TFS and I am using the TFS Plugin for Visual Studio. Now I have copied this project and worked on another PC without TFS and done some refactoring. Foolishly, I have then just used copy/paste and manual text editing to merge my changes, expecting that TFS just picks up the changes.
Apparantly, that is not the case.
Here is a screenshot of my local directory:
My Local TFS http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/2897/tfslocal.jpg
Notice how some files are missing the lock symbol - those are missing. If you look at the current TFS Tree on Codeplex, there are some files which do not exist locally anymore, i.e. WikiPlexExtensions.cs in the main folder.
Is there any way to easily tell TFS to compare my local to the remote repository and pick up the changes? I could re-add the local files using "Exclude from local project" and re-adding them, and I could create the "deleted" files as empty files just to delete them, but if I can avoid the manual messing around that would be good as well :)
The easiest way is to exploit VS 2008's "online" feature. Basically you want to set your solution offline, then bring it online while connected to the proper Codeplex server. TFS should figure out the rest.
Feature overview: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb898913.aspx
Tweaking the settings by hand: http://blogs.msdn.com/benryan/archive/2008/07/09/using-tfs-2008-power-tools-to-modify-server-s-offline-state.aspx
To compare local and server folders, you can check out TFS Power Tool. After installing it, you can bring up the source control explorer, right click on the server folder and then select 'Compare'. Folder difference window will display the differences. You can also right click on the differences to see available commands such as 'Get Latest' to update your local folder for example. Check out Bryan Harry's blog post on the power tool
I don't think there is an easy fix... What I've done in the past is back up those files that I have edited, then do a "Get Latest Version..." for the files I edited. This should change the files back to being read-only etc... Now, check out the files the regular way and paste the backups you had into the checked out files. Obviously this really only works when there are a couple of files you have edited.
TFS (in Visual Studio) has a "Reconcile" command for this, see Microsoft documentation, or this answer with steps.
BTW: This command may not haven been existing at time of original question, but this question came first when I was searching.