I'm trying to follow the no-commit strategy in keeping assemblies out of TFS while using NuGet. I'd like the projects to auto-restore dependencies and not add pending changes to TFS.
I've read a few ways to do this; one being using .tfignore, which will be a pain with the number of projects we have. We could cloak the folder in TFS, but we would need to add the packages folder for every project in order to cloak it. The last way, is to configure NuGet via NuGet.config using disableSourceControlIntegration which will keep the NugetClient from adding the packages to the project or solution.
**This is the configuration XML I'm using:
<solution>
<add key="disableSourceControlIntegration" value="true" />
</solution>
If I place it in my {SolutionDir}.nuget folder it works for that solution. I'm trying to place it in my %AppData%\nuget folder so that it is applied to all solutions but package restore is still causing TFS to add my packages folder contents.
I'm using Visual Studio 2013, NuGet 2.8.6 and TFS from VSOnline.**
I dont think there is a way to put this key in the root location, looks like Nuget only honors the key when it is specified in the {SolutionDir}.nuget folder. The Nuget document clearly mentions that this key works at solution level and need to added to the {SolutionDir}.nuget folder.
Source Control Integration
"disableSourceControlIntegration" under section "solution" allows you to disable source control integration for the "Packages" folder. This key works at the solution level and hence need to be added in a NuGet.config file in the "$(SolutionDir).nuget directory". The default value for this key is true.
EDIT & UPDATE : thanks to #TonyStewart871 for finding this information. I haven't tested this in Version 3.2 nor could find the official documentation.
But as per this GITHUB LINK Comments Section, from NuGet version 3.2 it is possible to add the key "disableSourceControlIntegration" at the user level for all solution's in the %appdata%\nuget\nuget.config file instead of adding at the individual solution level. Please find below the comment from deepakaravindr:
"You can add the setting not just to the solution level nuget.config, but also to your nuget.config at %appdata%\nuget. That works too! Just that it will get applied to every solution that you open on that machine. Remember to add the following section as a child to < configuration > section. And, note that the setting should always be under the < solution > section for it to work"
<solution>
<add key="disableSourceControlIntegration" value="true" />
</solution>
NUGET Documentation
There is a DisableSourceControlIntegration-TFS NuGet package that will add the {SolutionDir}.nuget folder and config files to the solution, as well as a .tfignore file for the NuGet packages folder. It's even easier than adding a single config file by hand. You can find it here: https://www.nuget.org/packages/DisableSourceControlIntegration-TFS.
It is correct this strategy of allow exclusion of NuGet Packages folder relatively to a single TFS project, because has sense to exclude nuget packages only if you needs to have access on a common project repository from several developers.
And so, if anyone needs to replicate solution's structure on his local machine restoring first time only NuGet packages (and so its content (libraries)), can do it without having any problems related to compatibility libraries and so on..
Every time NuGet restore libraries in Packages folder and solution compiles well.
While, if you only should configure NuGet behaviuor, others developer should have so too and therefore it should miss the convenience about this configuration policy: anyone should replicate this configuration rule everytime on his local machine..
Instead, storing this rule in tfs with its solution allows to everyone to inherits this rule.
Alternatevely, if one wants to work on a project alone, he can avoid if he wants to configure NuGet for don't commit its "Packages" folder content, and so the strategy of store this particular NuGet rule in TFS it is a good choice.
Related
To change the casing of a file name under Git we can use git mv command as specified here.
How do we achieve the same result in TFS?
We have a large collection of team projects (more than 150 team projects) and each team project is broken down into 6 Visual Studio projects at least, that makes at least 900 Visual Studio projects. Now in some of them we have Web.config file and in some of them web.config file. The point is, we're creating some automated QA/QC tools that need a consistent casing across our projects.
We want to change the lowercase web.config to PascalCased Web.config in all files.
We change file names on Windows, but TFS doesn't recognize it as change. We use Source Control Explorer to rename files there, and still it doesn't recognize the change.
We used tf rename web.config Web.config and it complains that the file already exists. We're stuck at this point. Any ideas?
Make sure the files are really in source control which are not prevented tracking by your settings (.gitignore or .tfignore ).
Try to get latest first (In Source Control Explorer right click the project node --> Get Latest Version ). Then rename the files. I tested on my side and the rename from lowercase web.config to Uppercase Web.config works as expected.
If that still not work, you can try to remap the workspace or create a new workspace to check that again.
Besides, you can also try to rename the file from web portal.
I am wondering if anyone is aware of how to properly include an Nuget package in my application. Installing it - adds the references automatically in Solution Explorer. In addition it create/display a file called package.config - and it looks like it wants to be added in my project. It is shown in Solution Explorer but appears in my root folder with a little + sign next to it - and allows me to Check In Pending Changes / add it. Am I supposed to add it to my project?
I basically don't want to screw up anything.
Yes the packages.config file is required. This file holds the packages you reference and the versions youre using. NuGet uses this file to restore your packages in a TFS build of on the machine of another developer.
Here is some more information on NuGet dependency resolution
Note that you should not checkin the packages folder in your solution folder. NuGet will restore packages to this folder using the packages.config file
UPDATE: the <PackageReference> format was introduced a while back. It can be used with both the old and new .csproj formats. One of the benifits is that the paths to the packages are no longer in your project file so you will get a lot less updates/merge conflicts when updating NuGet packages. See this page for more information: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/consume-packages/package-references-in-project-files
Yes, it's usually checked in as part of your solution. Source control and all that.
I'm trying to get TFS (2013) to ignore my packages folder. I passionately don't want it source controlled as I'm using NuGet and it's great!
I've tried cloaking (doesn't seem to work), I've tried adding .tfignore files - nothing is ignored. Why don't the TFS team just add an option to permanently ignore a folder or file like lots of the Subversion clients do?!
Here's the deal: We have to tell both NuGet and TFS to ignore the packages, because NuGet is trying to do source-control related stuff that it absolutely shouldn't be doing (bad form, Microsoft!). So you have to do two things.
First, add a file named .tfignore to the solution folder (note the lack of s after the tf). Its contents should be as follows:
\packages
That tells TFS to ignore your packages folder. Now, you would think that this would also ignore the repositories.config file. But it won't. Why? Who knows, the ways of Microsoft are strange and mysterious. Actually, I think it's part of the NuGet stuff I outline below, but if that ever gets fixed in the future and you want to keep the repositories.config file instead of letting VS regenerate it, you should be able to use this:
\packages
!\packages\repositories.config
OK, so now thanks to our .tfignore file, TFS is ignoring your packages. Everything is fine, right? WRONG, because NuGet is mucking around with your source control and adding the packages to your pending changes. So now let's tell NuGet to cut it out already.
Create a folder called .nuget in the root of your solution folder.1 Now, create a file called NuGet.config, and put it in this new folder2. Its contents should look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<solution>
<add key="disableSourceControlIntegration" value="true" />
</solution>
</configuration>
And now your packages should stay out of source control. Just remember to add the NuGet.config and .tfignore files to source control so they never get lost.
EDIT: If you're having issues, you may want to delete your packages folder, check in that change, and then go through the steps above.
ALSO EDIT: It looks like this won't happen with newer versions of Nuget. So maybe if you switch to VS/TFS 2017 this issue will clear up without jumping through the above hoops.
1. Add the folder using Source Control Explorer; right-click the solution->Add folder->.nuget
2. When I figured this out using VS 2013, I found the NuGet.config had to go in the .nuget folder. Even if you already have a NuGet.config file in the root of your solution folder (because, say, your company has an internal nuget feed). However, some in the comments have indicated that it works fine in the solution root in VS 2015. Personally, I switched to using TFS in git mode, so I can't test. Additionally, if you do have a custom feed, ensure that you have both the custom feed and nuget.org as keys in the Nuget.config file, or sometimes TFS will randomly decide it can't restore the packages.
An alternative solution to the above is the following.
Add the packages folder to TFS (without any files or sub-folders)
Right Click the Packages Folder
Left Click Advanced
Click Cloak
It is worth noting that this solution would need to be applied per TFS workspace. It has worked far more reliably for me rather than using the .tfignore file.
You can read more about this approach in the blog article Prevent TFS from adding installed NuGet packages to source control.
for people reporting that the .tfignore option wasn't working with the nuget.config setting it might be of interest - these steps finally worked for me:
Delete everything in my packages folder
Make sure TFS doesn't have any changes around that folder pending
Close VS
Re-open VS, and reload solution - using Nuget restore to re-populate
packages Note no changes are pending for TFS source control
Add a nuget.config file in a .nuget folder in your solution.
Add the following to the nuget.config file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<solution>
<add key="disableSourceControlIntegration" value="true" />
</solution>
</configuration>
The disableSourceControlIntegration is what makes the trick for TFS Version Control.
You need to be using local workspaces for .tfignore to work. The .tfignore file must be in the folder that contains the files or folders you want to ignore.
So if your solution structure looks like this:
\Project
\Packages
\OtherStuff
foo.cs
You'd put your .tfignore file in \Project:
\Project
\Packages
\OtherStuff
foo.cs
.tfignore
The contents of the .tfignore in your case would be:
\packages
Here's some documentation for you: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/vstudio/ms245454(v=vs.110).aspx#tfignore
You can permanently set this once-off in your AppData\Roaming for all solutions (old & new)!
In your %AppData%\NuGet\NuGet.Config file, add the following just before the </configuration> XML tag...
<config>
<add key="repositoryPath" value="C:\NuGetPackages" />
</config>
<solution>
<add key="disableSourceControlIntegration" value="true" />
</solution>
...you can specify any path you want - the important thing is putting it OUTSIDE your TFS workspace!
Now you never have to worry about that stuff again. Your solution folder will not contain any packages anymore; all solutions will default to using your custom packages location instead.
NOTE - This works is on a per-user basis.
Set your solution to restore on build, the package folder and packages file will be checked in but the packages won't.
If you are using Git with TFS you need to add a ".gitignore" file. You can do this in "team project | Settings | 'add ignore file'". Then open the file and uncomment the built in ignore statement for Nuget Packages.
If you are using TFVC and you have Local Workspaces configured you can use the ".tfignore" file that honours an identical format to the Git file. I think you need "packages/".
This didn't work for me quite on visual studio online and VS2013.
Right Click Solution > Enable NuGet Package Restore. This will add the Nuget.config file to solution
Add the .tfignore. I normally do this by adding a text file to the solution root, letting it detect that and then exclude by clicking 'detected add' > right click ignore.
Add the packages to .tfignore and tell it to include repositories.config
From the other comments it seems your milage may vary at this point. This is what I do:
Check everything in, including any packages.
Delete all packages in your solution and then check in this change (this will remove the packages from TFS)
Open the solution and build which will add the packages to the project but TFS will not pick them up.
The solution that worked for me was to create both a .tfignore and the following setting in the Nuget.Config:
<configuration>
...
<solution>
<add key="disableSourceControlIntegration" value="true" />
</solution>
...
</configuration>
My .tfignore contains this line:
\packages
[I'm using Visual Studio 2015 Update 2]
This is not ideal, and is currently logged as an open issue on github/nuget:
Make it easier to omit packages from TFVC #493
Terje's answer doesn't work all the time for me, sometimes it will work for a while, but then it will pend a load of "adds" for me all over again.
The only way I have found to solve this permanently is to Cloak the packages folder in my Workspace.
For example:
Type Server Local
============================================
Active $/Work/Main C:\Code\Main
Cloaked $/Work/Main/Packages
I had the same issue. /packages should work but didn't for me. packages*.* did work.
I've got a solution with Silverlight projects, a couple Web applications and some Windows service and their small Winforms test applications.
When I build it using TFS it puts all binary files in the Binaries folder. It also creates a _PublishedWebsites folder where it puts the web applications ready for deployment.
What I would like is for a few of the projects to have their ouput in a separate directory in the Binaries folder. I want the files that I would normally find in the bin\Release folder to be there.
I looked long and hard and could only find scarce documentation on how to achieve that and only for TFS 2008. There's a good article there link text and another entry for VS 2010 there link text. However, none of these work :-(
It seems that the build ignores the <OutputPath> property. I tried fiddling with the <AfterBuild> property but unfortunately if I use the $(OutDir) property I get ALL the files in the Binaries directory and not only the ones that just got compiled.
At the moment I'm setting up a separate build that only has the projects I'm interested in that get compiled but I would really like to have all the files needed for the release built all at once.
EDIT: I didn't make it clear enough but I'm using the latest version of TFS (TFS 2010 RTM). I set up <OutputPathDir> on the project level as explained in the links that I provided.
Cheers.
In your build definition (.proj) file, check that
<Project>
<PropertyGroup>
<CustomizableOutDir>true</CustomizableOutDir>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
Also, you may run into some problems if you're trying to compile what was once a "website" project type (created from File->New->Website->ASP.NET Webiste). They seem to override the output directory every time. We had to convert some of those to class libraries instead.
Is it possible to set up files/folders to ignore on a per-project basis in TFS source control?
For example, I've a website with an assets folder that I do not want to go in to source control. These assets are maintained by a separate system. Also, I don't want to put several gigabytes of assets into source control, but I need a couple of samples on my dev machine, but I don't want to check those in either.
If I'm working on this website while bound to source control and I refresh the tree, these files will automatically get added again
I want to prevent this from happening.
If you're using local workspaces (TFS 2012+) you can now use the .tfignore file to exclude local folders and files from being checked in.
If you add that file to source control you can ensure others on your team share the same exclusion settings.
Full details on MSDN - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms245454.aspx#tfignore
For the lazy:
You can configure which kinds of files are ignored by placing a text
file called .tfignore in the folder where you want rules to apply. The
effects of the .tfignore file are recursive. However, you can create
.tfignore files in sub-folders to override the effects of a .tfignore
file in a parent folder.
The following rules apply to a .tfignore file:
# begins a comment line
The * and ? wildcards are supported.
A filespec is recursive unless prefixed by the \ character.
! negates a filespec (files that match the pattern are not ignored)
Example file:
# Ignore .cpp files in the ProjA sub-folder and all its subfolders
ProjA\*.cpp
#
# Ignore .txt files in this folder
\*.txt
#
# Ignore .xml files in this folder and all its sub-folders
*.xml
#
# Ignore all files in the Temp sub-folder
\Temp
#
# Do not ignore .dll files in this folder nor in any of its sub-folders
!*.dll
For VS2015 and VS2017
Works with TFS (on-prem) or VSO (Visual Studio Online - the Azure-hosted offering)
The NuGet documentation provides instructions on how to accomplish this and I just followed them successfully for Visual Studio 2015 & Visual Studio 2017 against VSTS (Azure-hosted TFS). Everything is fully updated as of Nov 2016 Aug 2018.
I recommend you follow NuGet's instructions but just to recap what I did:
Make sure your packages folder is not committed to TFS. If it is, get it out of there.
Everything else we create below goes into the same folder that your .sln file exists in unless otherwise specified (NuGet's instructions aren't completely clear on this).
Create a .nuget folder. You can use Windows Explorer to name it .nuget. for it to successfully save as .nuget (it automatically removes the last period) but directly trying to name it .nuget may not work (you may get an error or it may change the name, depending on your version of Windows).
Or name the directory nuget, and open the parent directory in command line prompt. type. ren nuget .nuget
Inside of that folder, create a NuGet.config file and add the following contents and save it:
NuGet.config:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<solution>
<add key="disableSourceControlIntegration" value="true" />
</solution>
</configuration>
Go back in your .sln's folder and create a new text file and name it .tfignore (if using Windows Explorer, use the same trick as above and name it .tfignore.)
Put the following content into that file:
.tfignore:
# Ignore the NuGet packages folder in the root of the repository.
# If needed, prefix 'packages' with additional folder names if it's
# not in the same folder as .tfignore.
packages
# include package target files which may be required for msbuild,
# again prefixing the folder name as needed.
!packages/*.targets
Save all of this, commit it to TFS, then close & re-open Visual Studio and the Team Explorer should no longer identify the packages folder as a pending check-in.
Copy/pasted via Windows Explorer the .tfignore file and .nuget folder to all of my various solutions and committed them and I no longer have the packages folder trying to sneak into my source control repo!
Further Customization
While not mine, I have found this .tfignore template by sirkirby to be handy. The example in my answer covers the Nuget packages folder but this template includes some other things as well as provides additional examples that can be useful if you wish to customize this further.
It does seem a little cumbersome to ignore files (and folders) in Team Foundation Server. I've found a couple ways to do this (using TFS / Team Explorer / Visual Studio 2008). These methods work with the web site ASP project type, too.
One way is to add a new or existing item to a project (e.g. right click on project, Add Existing Item or drag and drop from Windows explorer into the solution explorer), let TFS process the file(s) or folder, then undo pending changes on the item(s). TFS will unmark them as having a pending add change, and the files will sit quietly in the project and stay out of TFS.
Another way is with the Add Items to Folder command of Source Control Explorer. This launches a small wizard, and on one of the steps you can select items to exclude (although, I think you have to add at least one item to TFS with this method for the wizard to let you continue).
You can even add a forbidden patterns check-in policy (under Team -> Team Project Settings -> Source Control... -> Check-in Policy) to disallow other people on the team from mistakenly checking in certain assets.
For TFS 2013:
Start in VisualStudio-Team Explorer, in the PendingChanges Dialog undo the Changes whith the state [add], which should be ignored.
Visual Studio will detect the Add(s) again. Click On "Detected: x add(s)"-in Excluded Changes
In the opened "Promote Cadidate Changes"-Dialog You can easy exclude Files and Folders with the Contextmenu. Options are:
Ignore this item
Ignore by extension
Ignore by file name
Ignore by ffolder (yes ffolder, TFS 2013 Update 4/Visual Studio 2013 Premium Update 4)
Don't forget to Check In the changed .tfignore-File.
For VS 2015/2017:
The same procedure:
In the "Excluded Changes Tab" in TeamExplorer\Pending Changes
click on Detected: xxx add(s)
The "Promote Candidate Changes" Dialog opens, and on the entries you can Right-Click for the Contextmenu. Typo is fixed now :-)
I found the perfect way to Ignore files in TFS like SVN does.
First of all, select the file that you want to ignore (e.g. the Web.config).
Now go to the menu tab and select:
File Source control > Advanced > Exclude web.config from source control
... and boom; your file is permanently excluded from source control.
I'm going to assume you are using Web Site Projects. These automatically crawl their project directory and throw everything into source control. There's no way to stop them.
However, don't despair. Web Application Projects don't exhibit this strange and rather unexpected (imho: moronic) behavior. WAP is an addon on for VS2005 and comes direct with VS2008.
As an alternative to changing your projects to WAP, you might consider moving the Assets folder out of Source control and into a TFS Document Library. Only do this IF the project itself doesn't directly use the assets files.