TFS command line client default location - tfs

If I'm using the TFS command line client is it always located # <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE? I'm referencing this page.

Nope, depends on VS version installed (and don't forget 64 bit machines too)

For reference only,My default location is
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE
vs2010,win7,64 bit

No it is not. E.g. on my machine it is under c:\VS10\Common7\IDE. You can use environment variables VS100COMNTOOLS (for VS 2010) and VS90COMNTOOLS (for VS 2008). The location of the tfs command line tools would be
"%VS100COMNTOOLS%\..\IDE\tf.exe"
-- for VS 2010
"%VS00COMNTOOLS%\..\IDE\tf.exe"
-- for VS 2008

In VS2008, tf.exe will be available under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE

Related

Stand-alone MS VSTS TFS Access for Windows Server 2008 (NOT R2)?

Yes, I know server 2008 is ridiculously old; but it is a client machine we cannot do anything about. Got that out of the way.
The client has an application which we maintain, and the source code lives on that machine, which is also the only machine around with VB6 on it (did I mention this project is old?).
I would like to find a client for the VisualStudio.com TFS services which can run on Server 2008 (not R2). Is there such a beast?
I've tried
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Community
TFS 2010 Power Tools
2017 Team Explorer standalone
Sadly, none of them are compatible.
Visual Studio is a kind of client of VSTS. But to be compatible server 2008 system. You could only use versions under Visual Studio 2008/Team Explorer 2008 for source control.
When you install Visual Studio 2008/Team Explorer 2008 successfully, you could also use TF Command to do version control for your project.

PowerShell to set Check-in Policy

I'm looking for a way to set the check-in policy in TFS via PowerShell. Ideally, I'd traverse the entire TFS project collection/project hierarchy, and turn on the Work Item required for check-in policy. I've seen and tried this guy's solution: http://www.manasbhardwaj.net/set-checkin-policies-projects-team-foundation-server-using-powershell/, but it's not working. Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Controls.WorkItemPolicy can't be found, so this approach is for naught. I've already figured out how to traverse the hierarchy, but I can't find the magic to set the policy. Anyone?
TFS 2013, on-premise. Visual Studio 2015/2017.
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Controls.dll still ships with VS 2015/VS 2017, but it has been removed the client OM DLLs from the GAC.
In VS 2015, you can find the DLL in C:\program files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer.
In VS 2017, you can find the DLL in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer.

Internal error in Changeset Comments Policy after updating VS2015 to Update 1

Everything was fine about an hour ago, when i tried to checkin something, the policy friendly reminded me to "provide a comment for the check-in". Then I installed VS2015 Update 1, like some of my colleagues did, and after that, i receive the following error message when trying to check something in:
Internal error in Changeset Comments Policy. Error loading the Changeset Comments Policy policy (The policy assembly 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.ChangesetComments, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' is not registered.). Installation instructions: To install this policy, follow the instructions in CheckForComments.cs.
My colleagues, of course, don't. As far as i know since VS2012 there is no need to install any version of the Power Tools anymore, so why does this happen? Additionally I also have VS2013 installed, where i do NOT get that error message, that version is working perfectly. Anyone having any idea where i need to look?
Okay, i got it. Somehow the installation messed something up. On my machine the folder
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation
was pretty empty, where my colleagues had a junction there, leading to this folder
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\XXXXXXX
where XXXXXX obviously varies from machine to machine. To find the correct one, go to the extensions folder (one up) and look for the one that contains "Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Controls.dll" and some other Teamfoundation dlls, then open an elevated command prompt and create the missing junction like so:
mklink /j "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\XXXXXX"
(watch out, you need to replace the XXXXX with the folder name on your machine)
- NOTE: Please dont forget to RESTART Visual Studio after doing this change in order to start cheking in seamlessly.
The suggested answer didn't work for me on VS 2015. I already had the junction, yet I was seeing the error.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/buckh/internal-error-loading-the-changeset-comments-checkin-policy/ pointed me to this:
Cause
With VS 2005 through 2010, to get the Changeset Comments policy,
you had to download and install the Team Foundation Power Tools.
and I had to download and install Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 Power Tools.
It's available within VS here:
Visual Studio 2015 > Tools > Extensions and Updates:
VS needs to be restarted after this.

How to find the path to tf.exe from MsBuild

I have an MsBuild file which shells out to TFS using tf.exe for a few things. Unfortunately the tf.exe file has been installed to different locations on the developer PCs and the build server.
I could really do with a way of detecting where the tf.exe file is located within my script in the same way you can do $(MSBuildExtensionsPath32) etc. Is this possible?
Thanks as always :)
Does the environment variable VS100COMNTOOLS point to the correct path for visual studio?
E.g.
VS100COMNTOOLS=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\
So then all you need is $(VS100COMNTOOLS)..\IDE
<Target Name="Build">
<Exec Command=""$(VS100COMNTOOLS)..\IDE\tf.exe""/>
</Target>
or however you want to tidy it up.
The environment variable changes depending on the version of Visual Studio:
%VS110COMNTOOLS% - Visual Studio 2012
%VS120COMNTOOLS% - Visual Studio 2013
%VS140COMNTOOLS% - Visual Studio 2015
Seems they changed location again in Visual Studio 2017.
It was not in any of the above locations on my machine.
I found TF.exe instead at:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer
(Some users may find in the Professional folder instead of Enterprise folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\tf.exe)
Apparently the environment variable is no longer set by default in VS 2017.

How to get tf.exe (TFS command line client)?

What's the minimum amount of software I need to install to get the 'tf.exe' program?
You need to install Team Explorer, it's best to install the version of Team Explorer that matches the version of TFS you are using e.g. if you're using TFS 2010 then install Team Explorer 2010.
2012 version http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=30656
2013 version http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40776
2019 version https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/#visual-studio-team-explorer-2019
You also might be interested in the TFS power tools. They add some extra command line features (using tfpt.exe) and also add some extra IDE features.
I'm in a virtual machine, and am trying to keep my VHD as small as possible, so I find Team Explorer is a really heavyweight solution (300+ MB install). As an alternative, I've had some luck copying a minimal set of EXEs/DLLs from a Team Explorer installation to a clean machine (.NET 4.0 is still required, of course).
I've only tried a handful of operations so far, but this set of files (about 8.5 MB) has been enough to get basic source-control functionality via tf.exe:
TF.exe
TF.exe.config
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common.Library.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Common.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Controls.dll
(It should go without saying that this is a completely unsupported solution, and it doesn't free you from the normal TFS licensing requirements.)
Depending on the operations you perform, you may find that additional DLLs are required. Fortunately, tf.exe will produce a nice error message telling you exactly which ones are missing.
For Visual Studio 2017 & 2019, it can be found here :
-Replace {YEAR} by the appropriate year ("2017", "2019").
-Replace {EDITION} by the appropriate edition name ("Enterprise", "Professional", or "Community")
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\{YEAR}\{EDITION}\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\tf.exe
For Visual Studio 2022, it can be found here :
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\{EDITION}\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\TF.exe
There is a Java TFS client in the Team Explorer Everywhere installation (together with an Eclipse plugin). Look at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30661
For reference: these are the required DLLs for Visual Studio 2017 (as did #ijprest for the VS 2010)
TF.exe
TF.exe.config
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Core.WebApi.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Common.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Controls.dll
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.Client.Interactive.dll
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.Common.dll
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.WebApi.dll
They will be in my base VM image. I'm going to use it to pull the latest deployment scripts from VC to a temporary local workspace folder when installing a new server.
tf workspace /new ...
tf workfold /map ...
tf get "%WorkSpaceLocalFolder%" /recursive
tf workfold /unmap
tf workspace /delete
<run deployment scripts from "%WorkSpaceLocalFolder%" >
rmdir "%WorkSpaceLocalFolder%"
(Sorry to post this as an answer, but I don't have enough reputation to comment, which I believe it should have been)
The tf.exe command line is included in the VSTS agent package in folder externals\vstsom.
You can also try TFS CLI for Node.js which is a cross-platform CLI for Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team Services.
Visual Studio 2017 Team Explorer
According to https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/04/05/team-explorer-for-tfs-2017/ you can now download it separately from Visual Studio via this link:
https://www.visualstudio.com/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=TeamExplorer&rel=15
Following on from the earlier answers above but based on a VS 2019 install ;
I needed to run "tf git permission" commands, and copied the following files from:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\TeamExplorer\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Core.WebApi.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Diff.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Client.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Contracts.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Controls.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.CoreServices.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Graph.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.HostingProvider.AzureDevOps.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.HostingProvider.GitHub.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.HostingProvider.GitHub.imagemanifest
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Provider.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.SourceControl.WebApi.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Common.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Common.Integration.dll
Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Controls.dll
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.Client.Interactive.dll
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.Common.dll
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.WebApi.dll
TF.exe
TF.exe.config

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