How to Remove/Delete Deleted Projects from TFS Source Control - tfs

I'm using TFS 2012 (Free preview).
I have a bunch of projects in my solution under source control.
Sometimes I find it the easiest solution to a problem to just scrap an entire project and start over. However, everytime I do that I run into trouble because the "deleted" project stays in the Source Control Explorer with a "deleted" status (Show/Hide Deleted Items button) and, at best, sticks around as junk, and at worst leads, to conflicts later on.
How can I get all traces of them removed?

You can use the tf destroy command. This is non recoverable.

TFSDeleteProject permanently destroys the team project, after which it cannot be recovered.
TFSDeleteproject [/q] [/force] [/excludewss] /collection:URL TeamProjectName

Related

How to check in mass changes into TFS

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.

Complete nuke all changes in visual studio and reset from TFS

I am using Visual Studio 2013. Regarding TFS workflow, there are issues I have when working on a bug or work item, after I am finished, I move the changes into a shelfset for further review, undo my changes by right clicking on the pending changes and clicking undo. The move on to the next issue or enhancement. The shelfsets can be indpendendly reviewed and then applied to whatever branch they are currently needed.
The problem I have is that undoing through visual studio does not completely reset the solution to a completely clean state. There are often orphaned files around or projects that have references to non-existing files or other such problems. I'd like to be able to completely nuke and reset my solutions from source control as if I am a new developer and I have not found an easy solution to do this.
Currently, the only way I can accomplish this is to go to "Source Control Explorer" remove the file system mapping for the project. Go to the file system, removed the folder. Go back into "Source Control Explorer" add the mappings back in. And then "Get Latest Version".
Is there an easy way to completely reset a solution in Visual Studio with TFS?
You can achieve this in Visual Studio 2010 without Power Tools. Process is likely similar for other VS versions.
Open the Source Control Explorer. Right-click the entry you want to reset, then choose "Get Specific Version." Select the version you want to reset to. Ensure that the two checkboxes are checked:
☑ Overwrite writeable files that are not checked out
☑ Overwrite all files even if the local version matches the specified version
This will overwrite all locally mapped files with the server's version. (And will correspondingly take time proportionate to the number of files.) I do not believe that this operation will remove any unmapped files.
If you have the Power Tools installed, call tfpt scorch /deletes /recursive /diff. That should make your local folder match the server exactly.
You can also call tfpt treeclean, which will just delete any item that is not mapped to TFS. It won't update or replace any changed files though, like scorch will.

TFS 2010: history lost after moving a folder

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.

Can TFS Pending Changes show files that are truly changed like SourceGear Vault?

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.

Source Control Explorer Shows Pending Changes, But In Pending Changes Window does not show

In TFS Source Control Explorer it shows pending changes (edit,[more]) with my name, but the Pending Changes window does not show any pending changes.
What I thought is, months ago my Visual Studio crashed, and at that time some files were checked out (which I was not aware of, due to the automatic checkout nature of TFS). Due to that, I copied a new VMImage, without undoing the pending changes (which are currently showing in Source Control Explorer).
One of my team members wants to checkin a new version of that particular file. Now, I need to undo my pending changes.
It sounds like you have them checked out under a different workspace. Try going to View->Other Windows->Source Control Explorer, then open the Workspace dropdown near the top of the screen, and select "Workspaces..."
I would suggest simply deleting any extra workspaces shown.
Steps to reproduce:
Make non-conflicting edits to files in TFS.
Get the latest version of the project from source control.
Sometimes, pending changes will be marked as non-pending and all project files are saved, resulting in no pending changes in the Team Explorer.
Workaround:
Right-click on the solution folder in source code explorer
Select "Compare"
In the search results, manually open files which have been edited/added and save them. This will register them as a "Pending Change" in team explorer.
This is because TFS apparently uses file properties rather than actual text comparisons to register pending changes in Visual Studio.
Tested on: Windows 7, Visual Studio Ultimate 2012.
Additional feedback from my supervisor: "Not sure if it was the issue this time, but that can happen when you disconnect from the TFS server (which sometimes happens without it being obvious). File | Source Control | Go Online usually fixes it (and the option isn’t available if you are online)."
TFS is buggy everywhere. i think you need to check out the parent folder and use TFS power toys to undo all the rubbish unchanged item.
TFS use file property to indicate whether or not a file has change, which sucks the most, and produce tons of usability problem.
If the file that you checked out is not part of the current solution, it might be hidden by the "Filter by solution" toolbar button on the Pending Changes window.
Get your changed files check out for edit
I had the same problem, I re-started VS, opened the solution and all the changes are now being displayed in the pending changes window.
Did you try to checkout the file from the Source Control Explorer view ?
For me, it worked.
I have just had a similar issue in VS2012.
To resolve the issue, I toggled the "Show xxx" dropdown to "Show Solution Changes" and then back to "Show All". The files that were missing from the list then re-appeared.
I was having a similar problem and it was due to the fact that my local version was a "non-version control solution" for some reason! meaning that my local was not really connected to the actual source code on tfs.
fix: Got the latest with override option checked. I know this could be painful if you had a lot of changes made to your local.
I was facing same issue the first answer was really helpfull. But make sure to check "Show Remote Workspaces" if you are working from different computer. In my cases the files where checked in and edited from home computer and it was showing pending changes. Deleting unwanted workspaces helps to solve this problem.
a different workspace on the same machine
a different workspace on another machine
TeamExplorer -> PendingChanges -> Excluded Changes ( I included this only because you didn't specifically mention they weren't there)
especially if you right clicked a node in solution explorer and chose check-in
Filtered based on TeamExplorer Settings #Oliver
Use a Tfs Query to find the pending changes and what workspace they are pending from.
Another option is to permanently or temporarily give them permissions to overwrite your lock. Then he can check-in anyhow.
I've seen this problem. Sometimes when I have the pending changes window in 'flat display mode', it doesn't display my changes. I find if I click the toolbar icon at the top of the pending changes window with tooltip 'Change to folder view', then they display. I think this is a bug in the Team Explorer Client.
sometimes I can not lock a branch because users have things checked out, but when I ask them about it, the pending merges/changes, only folders come up with no objects to change. What's with that?

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