This is a weird problem I keep facing. I sometimes find that files that have been excluded in TFS are included and thus each time I check-in, these files that were previously excluded risks getting pushed into the server.
This kind of problem happens most often when I restart my machine. What am I doing wrong?
If you right click on a solution, project, or folder to check-in you are automatically calling "include" on that structure recursively. If you want to permanently exclude those files you can put a .tfignore file in there.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms245454.aspx
In case the question wasn't clear. I have 3 MVC projects in one Solution. Every time I create a new project it adds the "Scripts" folder with all the .js files I'll ever need. I don't want to have this created every time for every application. Is there a way to reference scripts from a central folder in the solution so all applications/projects can share one common script folder with all the scripts common among them?
Edit:
Please explain the pros and cons of doing this if there are any...now I'm curious.
Here is what I would recommend:
Right click the solution and create a New Solution Folder called Common Javascript Files (or whatever you feel like calling it.
Right click on the Solution, click Open Folder in Windows Explorer,
or navigate there manually for other versions of Visual Studio :(
In the solution directory, create a directory with the same name as the solution folder (solution folders do not normally match directories at the source code level but this will for sanity sake).
In this new directory, add files that need to be shared between solutions.
In Visual Studio, click the solution folder and select Add - Existing Item.
In the file selection dialog, navigate to the directory previous created, select the file(s) added to the directory and click Add.
In each Project that needs a shared file, right click on the project (or directory within the project) and click Add - Existing Item.
Navigate to the shared Directory, Select the files and click the drop down arrow then click Add As Link.
Now the files in the projects are essentially short cuts to the files in the Solution Folder. But they are treated as actual files in the project (this includes .CS or Visual Basic files, they will be compiled as files that actually exist in the project).
PROS
Files are truly shared across projects at Design time
Only the files needed for each project can be added, it's not all or nothing
Does not require any configuration in IIS (virtual directory etc)
If the solution is in TFS Source control, you can add the Directory to the TFS Source and the shared files will be source controlled.
Editing a file by selecting it in the Project, will edit the actual file.
Deleting a Linked file does not delete the file.
This is not limited to JS files, linked files can be ANY file you might need (Images, Css, Xml, CS, CSHTML, etc)
CONS
Each deployment gets it's own file.
There is a small learning curve when understanding that Solution Folders are not Directories that exist in a Solution Directory.
The best thing to do, imo, is to roll your own CDN... Basically just create another site in IIS and give it it's own binding, e.g. "http://cdn.somedomain.com"
Then store all of your css/js/fonts/shared images etc on the CDN site and link to them from your other sites.
Doing so solves 2 problems,
All of your stuff is shared when it needs to be and you only have to manage 1 revision per file.
Your users browsers can cache them in 1 single location instead of downloading copies of your stuff for every site that uses them..
I added this answer because I see a lot of people referrencing creating virtual directories. While that does indeed share the files, it creates multiple download paths for them which is an extreme waste of bandwidth. Why make your users download jquery.js (1 * number of sites) when you can allow them to download it once on (cdn.somedomain.com).
Also when I say waste of bandwidth, I'm not just talking about server bandwidth, I'm talking about mobile users on data plans... As an example, I hit our companies HR site (insuance etc) on my phone the other day and it consumed 25mb right out the gate, downloaded jquery and a bunch of stuff 5 times each... On a 2gb a month data plan, websites that do that really annoy me.
Here it goes, IMO the best and easiest solution, I spent a week trying to find best and easiest way which always had more cons than pros:
Resources(DLL)
Shared
images
image.png
css
shared.css
scripts
jquery.js
MvcApp1
Images
Content
Shared <- We want to get files from above dll here
...
MvcApp2
Images
Content
Shared <- We want to get files from above dll here
...
Add following to MvcApp1 -> Project -> MvcApp1 Properties -> Build events -> post build event:
start xcopy "$(SolutionDir)Resources\Shared\*" "$(SolutionDir)MvcApp1\Shared" /r /s /i /y
Here is explanation on what it does: Including Build action content files directory from referenced assembly at same level as bin directory
Do the same for MvcApp2. Now after every build fresh static files will be copied to your app and you can access files like "~/Shared/css/site.css"
If you want you can adjust the above command to copy scripts from .dll to scripts folder of every app, that way you could move some scripts to .dll without having to change any paths,here is example:
If you want to copy only scripts from Resources/Shared/scripts into MvcApp1/scripts after each build:
start xcopy "$(SolutionDir)Resources\Shared\Scripts\*" "$(SolutionDir)MvcApp1\Scripts" /r /s /i /y
This is a late answer but Microsoft has added a project type called Shared Project starting Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 that can do exactly what you wan't without having to link files.
The shared project reference shows up under the References node in the
Solution Explorer, but the code and assets in the shared project are
treated as if they were files linked into the main project.
"In previous versions of Visual Studio, you could share source code between projects by Add -> Existing Item and then choosing to Link. But this was kind of clunky and each separate source file had to be selected individually. With the move to supporting multiple disparate platforms (iOS, Android, etc), they decided to make it easier to share source between projects by adding the concept of Shared Projects."
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/somasegar/2014/04/02/visual-studio-2013-update-2-rc-windows-phone-8-1-tools-shared-projects-and-universal-windows-apps/
Info from this thread:
What is the difference between a Shared Project and a Class Library in Visual Studio 2015?
https://stackoverflow.com/a/30638495/3850405
A suggestion that will allow you to debug your scripts without re-compiling the project:
Pick one "master" project (which you will use for debugging) and add the physical files to it
Use "Add As Link" feature as described in Eric's answer to add the script files to the other projects in solution
Use CopyLinkedContentFiles task on Build, as suggested in Mac's comment to copy the files over to the second over to your additional projects
This way you can modify the scripts in the "master" project without restarting the debugger, which to me makes the world of difference.
In IIS create a virtual folder pointing to the same scripts folder for each of the 3 applications. Then you'll only need to keep them in a single application. There are other alternatives, but it really depends on how your applications are structured.
Edit
A scarier idea is to use Areas. In a common area have a scripts directory with the scripts set to be compiled. Then serve them up yourself by getting them out of the dll. This might be a good idea if you foresee the common Area having more functionality later.
Most of the files that are included by default are also available via various CDN's.
If you're not adding your own custom scripts, you may not even need a scripts directory.
Microsoft's CDN for scripts: http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/cdn.ashx
What's the proper way (sequence of steps) to rename a folder in TFS? I tried doing it locally then commit but it's not working. I think you prob have to do it from TFS (server-side) instead right? But then if you do that and get latest then I guess it'll just update your folder locally and hopefully you don't have any other conflicts?
Open Source Control Explorer, mark your module, press F2 & enter the new name.
Module will appear in your Pending Changes window with Change type "rename".
Suppose you had a module named test.txt which participated in 3 changesets. It then gets renamed into itsatest.txt When I get History for file itsatest.txt I get this:
In my hard drive the test.txt doesn't exist after the rename.
The same principle works with folders as well.
EDIT after comment
Problem is I did all this renaming locally on my file system...I don't
want to lose all these changes because I also changed namespaces in
code, etc
I see. One way to proceed is to copy the entire directory somewhere out of your workspace. Then delete it from your workspace and retake it from source control with 'Get specific version' and 'Overwrite all files even if the local version matches the specified version'. Proceed with the rename & checkin.
Perform a directory compare between your locally stored dir & the one you 've just renamed. All your changed files should appear. Check them out & copy-paste them manually into your workspace.This should take care of the situation.
I'm pretty sure I remember another TFS SO post, where the recommendation was 'never mix pending changes with pending renames' - can't seem to find it ATM...
At some point in the past few weeks, one of our folders in TFS disappeared. I've tried having it display deleted files, and it's not there. I've tried using the folder history compare tool to walk back in time, and the folder doesn't show up.
I suspect that the folder may have been moved to a different area of the source tree. Does TFS track if/when a file or folder is moved in a manner that can be queried?
Use this to find the current location of the folder:
tf dir $/*MyFolder* /recursive /server:http://TFSServer:8080
You may need to play with the $/MyFolder part a bit. Maybe try some variations like $/*MyFolder, $/MyFolder, etc.
We had a Project in our solution called DatabaseCreation - which was responsible for creating the database and running the scripts (contained in directories within the project).
Everything was fine.
We then wanted to make the creation of this database to be available from an app and from a console, so re-factored so that we had ...
DatabaseCreation.Core
DatabaseCreation.App
DatabaseCreation.Console
Core has the directories containing scripts, and the App and Console run them.
When built with Visual Studio the directories containing the scripts are copied to the Output bin directory (either App or Console) but problem is: when the build server runs, the script directories don't get copied to the bin folder.
We've tried with TFS and Team City. I realise I could just copy them over, but its frustrating that it works when building in Visual Studio!
Can anyone put me on the right track please?
Check the Build Type for the files in the scripts directory. Find that by clicking one or many files (ctrl+click) then hitting properties (often f4). You likely want them to be content with Copy Always or Copy if newer.
The files were set to copy always, but the build just wouldn't pick them up.
The slightly awkward work around was to add the files as links from one project to another.
Add Existing -> navigate to other project - Looking for the little arrow on the right of the add button -> press that, Add as link option appears.