tfsI get my some of my local files replaced with another version when I check in a new version of my project.
We use TFS 2010.
Here's the situation in more detail:
A colleague made significant and incomplete changes to the project leaving it nonfunctional, checked in that code and went on a two week vacation. Since these changes were not even required the obvious course of action is tho get the previous version and work from there.
The problem happens when I check in the new working version of the project: instead of just delivering files to the server I get files replaced on my machine with the server version. I never would have thought checking in would get files from the server!
When you check in your changes, Visual Studio will always try to merge them with the latest version on the server. It must, because the version history of each file is linear, unless you manually branch files.
If the changes on the server are incompatible with your local changes, the checkin will be blocked and you will have to resolve any conflicts locally before you can check in again.
What you're seeing is expected behavior and it cannot be different due to the way TFVC works. Your colleague should not check in a version that doesn't work. In such cases he should create a shelveset (which will store the files seperately from standard history).
In your case I'd select the checkin from your colleague, select Roll back and check in the result of that. It essentially removes his changes, but they are not lost. By re-applying the rolled back changeset (roll back the roll back changeset) or by getting the specific version with the changes he can continue working on them.
We've lost at least one changeset in TFS (we don't know yet if there's more, could be none). We noticed a changeset that was at the top of the list is now gone. We think there might be two at least because the symptoms below also exists for at least one other file we've discovered. Additionally, we can see a hole in the changeset numbering sequence, and we don't believe the changeset with the file described below is that one.
The single file involved had one line changed, and the version in TFS has the file before the change.
Doing a get latest or get specific version gives me the old file, before the change.
After doing the "Get specific version", in Source Explorer, in the column that shows workspace status, it says "No" indicating that the file is outdated. Nothing I've tried so far gives me the file with the change that was checked in.
If I try to view the file from the Source Explorer, it says my file is out of date and asks if I want to view the server version or the workspace version. Selecting the workspace version gives me the file before the change (probably because I did the get specific version above), selecting the server version gives me nothing, dialog just goes away.
If I check out the file, and redo the change, and try to check in, it says that a newer version exists on the server and asks me how to resolve. I can pick discard local changes or discard server changes. Since I want to check in my changes, I select to discard the server changes, but when I try to check in again (conflicts in TFS stops the checkin process), it just repeats the conflict and asks what to do.
Basically:
Changeset is gone, verified with the developer that checked it in
File does not have the change on the server
Server is confused regarding version of this file, complains about outdated version if I try to view it
Won't let me check in changes, just repeats a conflict with a newer version, presumably the file the developer checked in that for some reason is no longer available through a changeset
So... anyone had this problem? This is TFS 2008 with everything I know of updates applied, including all service packs on the developer machines, running Visual Studio 2008 Professional with Team Explorer 2008.
What do I do? Is my only recourse reverting to the nightly backup?
Edit: Things I'm trying after posting the question:
Checking disk space on server hosting the SQL Server (same as the TFS server): Plenty, 6GB free on one disk and 9GB free on another. Perhaps not plenty enough for the future, but easy to increase (virtual machines), but should not have anything to do with our current problem.
No change: Recreating a fresh workspace in a different folder on disk (I deleted them all before adding a new one), doing a "Get specific" version on root folder of project and checking the bottom two checkboxes (overwrite writeable and overwrite all), afterwards says that I have the latest file (Yes in that column I mentioned above). Viewing the file shows me file before the change. Doing a "Get specific" version on that particular file makes it turn to "No", same problem with checkin.
Solved??
I did another checkin on a totally different file, not including the file we had trouble with above, but that file was "attached" to that changeset, even though it was definitely not checked in by me when I tried this.
In other words, it looks like the part of the changeset that related to the file was still in TFS, with the right changeset id, so when another changeset appeared with the same id, that file became a part of it.
Has anyone experienced anything like this? It doesn't really improve my trust towards TFS if things like this can happen.
We still have another file that misbehaves, I will have to see if it has all of the same problems or not and what, if anything, we can do with that. If that file is related to the other changeset we seem to be missing, I don't think we can get that changeset into the database unless we fire up a SQL tool (which I'm really not going to do.)
Why Why WHY doesn't TFS's get latest work consistently?
You would have thought that feature would have been tested thoroughly.
What I have to do is, get specific version, then check both overwrite writetable files + overwrite all files.
Is my local setup messed up or you do this also?
TFS redefined what "Get Latest" does. In TFS terms, Get Latest means get the latest version of the files, but ignore the ones that the server thinks is already in your workspace. Which to me and just about everyone else on the planet is wrong.
See this link: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/srlteam/archive/2009/04/13/how-get-latest-version-really-works.aspx
The only way to get it to do what you want is to Get Specific Version, then check both of the "Overwrite ..." boxes.
Sometimes Get specific version even checking both checkboxes won't get you the latest file. You've probably made a change to a file, and want to undo those changes by re-getting the latest version. Well... that's what Undo pending changes is for and not the purpose of Get specific version.
If in doubt:
undo pending check in on the file(s)
do a compare afterwards to make sure your file matches the expected version
run a recursive 'compare' on your whole project afterwards to see what else is different
keep an eye on pending changes window and sometimes you may need to check 'take server version' to resolve an incompatible pending change
And this one's my favorite that I just discovered :
keep an eye out in the the Output window for messages such as this :
Warning - Unable to refresh R:\TFS-PROJECTS\www.example.com\ExampleMVC\Example MVC\Example MVC.csproj because you have a pending edit.
This critical message appears in the output window. No other notifications!
Nothing in pending changes and no other dialog message telling you that the file you just requested explicitly was not retrieved! And yes - you resolve this by just running Undo pending changes and getting the file.
TFS, like some other source control providers, such as Perforce, do this, as the system knows what the last version you successfully got was, so get latest turns into "get changes since x". If you play by its rules and actually check things out before editing them, you don't confuse matters, and "get latest" really does as it says.
As you've seen, you can force it to reassess everything, which has a much greater bandwidth usage, but behaves closer to how SourceSafe used to.
It's hard to respond to a statement without examples of how it's not working, but it's crucial to understand that TFVC (in "Server Workspace" mode, which was the mechanism prior to TFS 2012) does not examine the state of your local filesystem. TFVC Server Workspaces are a "checkout-edit-checkin" type of system where this is by-design, an intentional decision made to massively reduce the amount of file I/O required to determine the state of your workspace. Instead, the workspace information is saved on the server.
This allows TFVC Server Workspaces to scale to very large codebases very efficiently. If you are in a multi-gigabyte code base (like Visual Studio or the Windows source tree) then your client does not need to scan your local filesystem, looking for files that may have changed, because the contract you have with TFS is that you will explicitly check a file out when you want to edit it.
You are expected to not mark a file as write-only and change it without explicitly checking it out first. If you go down this route, then the server does not know that you have made changes to your file, and performing a "Get Latest" operation will not update your local workspace, because you haven't told the server that you've made changes.
If you do subvert this mechanism then you can use the tfpt reconcile command to examine your local workspace for changes that you have made locally.
If you find yourself using "Get Specific Version" and selecting the "force" and "overwrite" options, then it is very likely that you are in the habit of bypassing all of the enforcements that TFS has implemented to keep you from hurting yourself, and you should probably consider TFVC Local Workspaces.
TFVC Local Workspaces provide an "edit-merge-commit" type of version control system, which means that you do not need to explicitly check files out before editing them and they are not read-only on-disk. Instead, you simply need to edit the file, and your client will scan the filesystem, notice the change, and present this as a pending change.
TFVC Local Workspaces are recommended for small projects that do not require fine-grained permissions control, since they present a much nicer workflow. You are not required to be online, and you do not have to explicitly check files out before editing them.
TFVC Local Workspaces are the default in TFS 2012, and if they are not enabled for you, then you should ask your server administrator. (Organizations with very large codebases or strict auditing requirements may disable TFVC Local Workspaces.)
Eric Sink's excellent book Version Control By Example outlines the differences between checkout-edit-checkin and edit-merge-commit systems and when one is more appropriate than the other.
The Professional Team Foundation Server 2013 book also provides excellent information about the differences between TFVC Server Workspaces and TFVC Local Workspaces. The MSDN documentation and blogs also provide detailed information:
Decide between using a local or a server workspace
Server workspaces vs. local workspaces
Team Foundation Server – Trying to understand Server versus Local Workspaces
Team Foundation Server (TFS) keeps track of its local copy in a hidden directory called $TF.When you issue the "get Latest Version", TFS looks into this folder and see weather I have the latest copy or not. If it does it will not download the latest copy. It does not matter if you have the original file or not. In fact you might have deleted the entire folder (as in my case) and TFS won't fetch the latest copy because it does not look into the actual file but the hidden directory where it records changes. The flaw with this design is, anything done outside the system will not be recorded in TFS. For example, you may go into Windows explorer, delete a folder or file and TFS wont recognize it. It will be totally blind. At least I would expect there Windows would not let you delete this file but it does!
One way to enforce the latest copy is to delete the hidden $TF folder manually. To do that, go to command prompt and navigate to the root folder where you project was checked out and issue this command
rd/s $tf // remove $TF folder and everything inside it
If you want to just check the hidden folder, you can do it using
dir /ah // display hidden files and folders
Note: If you do it, the tf will think you do not have any local copy even though you have it in files and it will sync up everything again.
Caution: Use this method at your own risk. Please do not use it on critical work.
"Get latest version" by default will only download the files that have changed on the server since the last time you ran "Get latest version". TFS keeps track of the files you download so it doesn't spend time downloading the same version of the files again. If you are modifying the files outside of Visual Studio, this can cause the consistency problems it sounds like you are seeing.
Unfortunately, there has to be one or more bugs in TFS 2008, since this problem regularly crop up on developer machines and build servers where I work as well.
I can do Get Latest, I can see in the history list of the project that there have been commits after I last did a Get Latest, I have not touched the files on disk in any way, but after the "Get Latest" function has completed, when I check the TFS tab, some of the files still says that they're not the latest version.
Obviously TFS is able to determine that I have old files locally, since the list says so. Yet, Get Latest fails to do that, get the latest version. If I do what you did, use the Get Specific version, and check the two checkboxes at the bottom of the dialog, then the files are retrieved.
We changed our build servers to always use the Get Specific version type of function instead, so this part now works, but since our build server (TeamCity) also relies on checking if there have been changes to the files in order to kick off a build, sometimes it lapses into a "nothing changed, nothing to see here, move along" mode and does nothing until we forcibly run the build configuration.
Note that I have experienced this problem on a machine that is never touched, except for get latest + build, both manually, so there's nothing tampering with the files. It's just TFS getting confused.
One time this cropped up I verified that the files on disk was indeed binary identical to the version previously retrieved, so no manual tampering had been done with the files.
Also, I fail to see how TFS can "know" whether files have changed on disk or not without actually looking at the contents. If one part of TFS can see that the files are indeed not the latest version, then the Get Latest version should absolutely be able to get the latest version. This in reference to comments to other answers here.
It might because you are login TFS as the same user, and the workspace name (based on machine name by default) is also the same, so TFS thinks your are on the same machine and same workspace, thus you already have the latest version of the files, so it wont get them for you.
try rename your machine, and create a new workspace as a new machine.
Go with right click: Advanced > Get Specific Version. Select "Letest Version" and now, important, mark two checks:
The checks are:
Overwrite writeable files that are not checked
Overwrite all files even if the local version matches the specified version
WHen I run into this problem with it not getting latest and version mismatches I first do a "Get Specific Version" set it to changeset and put in 1. This will then remove all the files from your local workspace (for that project, folder, file, etc) and it will also have TFS update so that it knows you now have NO VERSION DOWNLOADED. You can then do a "Get Latest" and viola, you will actually have the latest
I had the same issue with Visual Studio 2012. No matter what I did, it didn't get the code from TFS source control.
In my case, the cause was mappings a folder + subfolder from the source control separately but to the same tree in my local HD.
The solution was removing the subfolder mapping using the "manage workspaces" window.
Most of the issues I've seen with developers complaining that Get Latest doesn't do what they expect stem from the fact that they're performing a Get Latest from Solution Explorer rather than from Source Control Explorer. Solution Explorer only gets the files that are part of the solution and ignores anything that may be required by files within the solution, and therefore part of source control, whereas Source Control explorer compares your local workspace against the repository on the server to determine which files are needed.
It could happen when you use TFS from two different machines with the same account, if so you should compare to see changed files and check out them then get latest then undo pending changes to remove checkout
This worked for me:
1. Exit Visual Studio
2. Open a command window and navigate to the folder: "%localappdata%\Local\Microsoft\Team Foundation\"
3. Navigate to the sub folders for every version and delete the sub folder "cache" and its contents
4. Restart Visual Studio and connect to TFS.
5. Test the Get Latest Version.
In my case, Get specific version, even checking both check boxes and undoing all pending changes didn't work.
Checked the work spaces. Edit current workspace. Check all paths.
The solution path was incorrect and was pointing to a deleted folder.
Fixed the path and get latest worked fine.
Every time this happens to me (so far) is because I have local edits pending on the .csproj project file. That file seems to keep a list of all the files included in the project. Any new files added by somebody else are "not downloaded" because they are not in my locally edited (now stale) project file. To get all the files I first have to undo pending changes to the .csproj file first then "get all". I do not have to undo other changes I have made, but I may have to go back and include my new files again (and then the next guy gets the same problem when he tries to "get all"...)
It seems to me there is some fundamental kludginess when multiple people are adding new files at the same time.
(this is in .Net Framework projects, maybe the other frameworks like Core behave differently)
just want to add TFS MSBuild does not support special characters on folders i.e. "#"
i had experienced in the past where one of our project folders named as External#Project1
we created a TFS Build definition to run a custom msbuild file then the workspace folder is not getting any contents at the External#Project1 folder during workspace get latest. It seems that tfs get is failing but does not show any error.
after some trial and error and renaming the folder to _Project1. voila we got files on the the folder (_Project1).
Tool:
TFS Power Tools
Source:
http://dennymichael.net/2013/03/19/tfs-scorch/
Command:
tfpt scorch /recursive /deletes C:\LocationOfWorkspaceOrFolder
This will bring up a dialog box that will ask you to Delete or Download a list of files. Select or Unselect the files accordingly and press ok. Appearance in Grid (CheckBox, FileName, FileAction, FilePath)
Cause:
TFS will only compare against items in the workspace. If alterations were made outside of the workspace TFS will be unaware of them.
Hopefully someone finds this useful. I found this post after deleting a handful of folders in varying locations. Not remembering which folders I deleted excluded the usual Force Get/Replace option I would have used.
I encountered the same problem:
My development server was corrupted and restored, but the information restored was from a few days ago.
TFS was updated that all the files are up to date, but in practice my files were correct a few days ago!
Nothing I did helped. get latest did not get the latest version.
At the end I got specific varision from a month ago. my files were updated accordingly, and then I did get latest.
And it worked. the files have been updated.
I need to get a previous version of a file in source control, using Team Foundation Server (TFS), . When I try to get a specific version based on change set the merge screen comes up. I do not want this, I just want to get the previous version and have it checked out. My current version of the file got corrupted and now I just want the previous version.
Ah, it sounds like you want to rollback (that is, remove some checkins from TFS' history). There is not a built-in way to do this with TFS. However, you can use the TFS Power Tools to accomplish this (there is a tfpt rollback command).
In practice, the rollback command just does what you're trying to do. To do it manually, get the version that you want (without checking out the file). Save that somewhere else, then check the file out (which will perform a "get latest" command). Then overwrite that version with the version that you saved elsewhere.
Alternatively, there's a setting in the TFS settings to "Get latest version of item on check out," which may be the cause of all of your problems. It's located in Tools->Options, under Source Control->Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. If that's checked for you, try unchecking it and seeing if it'll let you do what you're trying.
On the merge screen, you should be able to choose to overwrite your local copy with the server version. That sounds like what you want to do.
However, the merge screen should only show up if you have pending changes. If you undo your pending changes on the file, the Get Specific Version command shouldn't cause a merge.
Hmm maybe I am doing something else wrong. I check the file out, then I do get specific version, enter the changeset number, I do not check either of the overwrite check boxes. I get the merge screen, I tell it to overwrite local copy. It does this, but then it undoes my check out and says I do not have the latest on my local computer. If I checkout at this point it ovewrites my previous version with the latest.