I'm an experienced SVN user getting used to TFS at a new client site. The main problem I've had adjusting to the new tool is this - how can I get a listing of all files in my working copy that have changed from current/latest server revision, including added or deleted files?
Essentially, I'm looking for the TFS equivalent of an "svn diff". The "TF" command-line tool has a "diff" command which reports changed files but I can't find an option to report deleted or added files; this missing feature has resulted in a couple check-ins which (embarrassingly) broke the build.
Which version of TFS?
TFS2010 has a folder compare command, File > Source Control > Compare... (or in the Source Control Explorer, right-click on the project path you're interested in, and select Compare...).
Set up the Source path to be a folder on the server and the Target path to be a local folder in your workspace (or vice versa). Under View Options, select Show items that exist only in source path, Show items that exist only in target path and Show items that are different and click OK.
Is there any reason you can't use the Source Control Explorer?
If you right click on the folder, project or branch you can click Compare and you will see all files that have been deleted or added.
I usually do the following:
Open your Team Explorer tab in Visual Studio and click on Pending Changes.
There you will see your changed files.
Related
Say I have files under TFS source control.
Some external process will
Delete some of the files (A) in the local directory.
Add some files (B) to the local directory - files which should then be tracked in source control.
Modify some files (C).
Now I want to reflect all changes in TFS source repository, that is, I want to
Delete files A from source control.
Add files B to source control.
Update (check-in) files C.
B and C are trivial.
But i dont know how to easily see the list of files A. i.e. the ones that have been physically removed from the local directory but are still under source control.
How to view the list of them?
And is there a TFS command to delete them from source control?
Edit:
Forgot to precise: I'm using TFVC, with a local workspace.
Because is TFVC and I guess you work with server workspace you can't delete local file and it will appear in the Pending Changes. you must to delete it from the source control also.
Just right click on the file and "Delete", then check in.
If you have multiple files that you local deleted and you want easily get all of them and delete them, you can right click on the folder and then "Compare", in the popup click "Ok" and you will get the differences between your local folder and the server folder. then right click on the files and "Delete".
How to view the list of them?
Team Foundation Server requires that you explicitly pend changes for these files - if you delete a file locally, this does not explicitly pend a delete against Team Foundation Server.
To list the those files, the best method is create a local workspace and not a server Workspace. If we create the local workspace and delete the file out of Visual Studio, we will receive the list under the Excluded Changes of Pending Changes:
If you are using server Workspace, you have to delete those files in the source control. To list this change file, you could use Compare option in the Source Control Explorer:
Detail steps:
Open the Source Control Explorer
Right-click on the folder with the changes and choose Compare
Also, you can use "Reconcile" feature to sync those file to the local/server.
Check this thread for some details.
And is there a TFS command to delete them from source control?
We could use Delete Command to delete the file from source control, but we have to specify the identifies the file or folder. If you want to delete those files deleted out of Visual Studio, I am afraid we could not do that, because there is no such argument to list those changed files.
Hope this helps.
When checking in my project I get the error:
Could not find file 'C\blah blah blah'.
I have a feeling this might be a file from an old project I deleted.
I have tried deleting my TFS connection and workspaces.
This will happen when TFS has some changes staged that no longer exist on the file system. For instance, if you add some files in Visual Studio (which adds them to the changes list), delete them directly from the file system, then attempt to check in the changes, it will complain that it could not find the file(s).
To remove these changes from the list, you can open Source Control Explorer (View > Other Windows > Source Control Explorer) and either Delete the nonexistent files or right-click on the offending files and Undo Pending Changes.
You can also undo these specific changes from the Pending Changes panel in Team Explorer.
Create an empty file to replace the missing file and complete your check-in. After you have checked in the file correctly delete the file that is not needed.
Go to the project that has file 'blah blah blah', you should see the file has an error mark indicating it does not exist. Right click the file > Delete. That should take care of the problem.
I had a similar problem. I had forgotten I was tinkering with adding publish profiles for publish. TFS felt it needed to check that in, even though the output wasn't there. I simply right clicked on the App.Publish folder in Team Explorer inside of visual studio and chose to exclude. Checked everything back in with no problem.
I encountered the same error:
but my issue was a bit different. I was changing a couple of folder names and when committing I didn't add the new folders to the repo:
git add folderName
solved the issue for me.
Seems like this should be something very simple, but I can't find how to do this...
I made a changes to several files spread within a repo by using a script that I wrote. Problem is TFS in its infinite wisdom does not think the files have changed. Aside from manually finding each file and clicking "checkout for editing" is there any way to tell TFS to just rescan everything and detect changes?
A Folder Compare (File->Source Control->Compare...) should do the trick. Select the top folder from where to start comparison, and select to compare with Latest Version. The result hould show files that are changed, and whether they are checked out or not.
TFS has a "Reconcile" command for this. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/22860674/932282 for a complete answer.
Local Workspace
You need to work with a local Workspace. Here's how to manage workspaces:
visualstudio.com: "Create and work with workspaces".
When adding or editing the workspace you click Advanced >> . Then you set Location: to Local.
Now when your script or anything else changes files outside Visual Studio, your workspace detects the changes automatically.
It also detects adds or deletes but you have to include them to your Pending Changes manually with the link under Excluded Changes
BUT BE CAREFUL. When adds or deletes get detected and you add them to your Pending Changes, the files aren't automatically included to your project. So you maybe check them in to TFS, but they aren't listed under the Solution Explorer.
Matt Burke has a fix for that problem:
mattburkdev.com: "Automatically Include All Files in Folder in Visual Studio"
To edit the Project file you rightclick your project, chosse Unload Project, then rightclick on it again and choose Edit. After you edited the project files save and close it. Then rightclick and chose Load Project.
But with that you also need to be careful, because the Project only searches for new files in these folders to include, when you load the project and not while you have the project open. So when some files get added outside Visual Studio, you just reload the project.
Server Workspace
But if you have to stick to a Server Workspace for some reason i got another trick for you:
FIRST:
Check out all Files that maybe have pending changes (better check out many files). Then go to Team Explorer -> Pending Changes and choose all files you just checked out. Then choose "undo changes". After this you get a message "Confirm Undo Checkout". This message ONLY pops up for the files, which actually HAVE changed! Press "NO" for each files or "No to All".
FINALLY: Under pending changes all files get removed from the list except the ones which have pending changes.
I hope I could help someone and you didn't have to search for this solution as long as I had to ^^
If any of your changes occured when you were offline, you can go to File > Source Control > Go Online, and all files will be checked for modification.
If none of the above work, you can also try to rebind your projects by going to File -> Source Control -> Advanced -> Change Source Control.
In Visual Studio 2015:
Source Control -> Advances -> Refresh Status
I had this problem a while age when i moved project from one pc to another.
the solution was to remove temporary files that TFS had created in solution folder.
Delete .vs and hidden $tf folder.
If no luck,on your local PC copy your solution folder to another, remove all files inside solution, get latest version from TFS server ,then from the copied folder just grab neccessary and edited files and put them back to solution folder (this will overwrite some files).
After all don't forget to check project mappings and if everything seems correct try right clicking on solution and 'Add to source control' option.
Dtsx file dropped in TFS folder was not being recognized.
On your Visual Studio (2015) home screen, click on the Team Foundation Server link. Make navigate to the correct branch.
On the window on the left side of the screen, navigate to the folder that contains your file. Expand the folder.
To the right of the folder you will see three dots. Click on those and then click on “ + Add File(s)”.
Choose “Upload Existing Files”. Then you can drag and drop your .dtsx files into the window and then click Okay.
Finally, you’ll have to do a ‘Fetch’ to add the files there. Then you need to do a ‘Pull’. Lastly, you can commit the change to remote branch.
I deleted some files and some folders in TFS. Many check in's later I found out that I need the deleted functionality back in my project.
How can I restore the deleted files and folders?
In Team Explorer (in Visual Studio): Tools | Options | Source Control | Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and select Show Deleted Items...
Then in source control explorer you'll see the items greyed out. You can right click on them and Undelete. (This option will only be available if they, after the undelete, will be included in your current workspace).
NB. in newer versions of Visual Studio (eg. 2013) there is now a button to switch on display of deleted items in the Source Control Explorer's toolbar. Its the second button (here with the VS dark theme):
Alternatively using the TFS PowerToys you can look at history and right click to select "Rollback Entire Changeset": this will create pending changes to revert the changes of the selected changeset.
Edit: Added paragraph on newer versions of VS.
Assuming you successfully undelete as per #Richard's answer, there might still be an issue with the item appearing in Solution Explorer (at least it was for me using Visual Studio 2015). That is to say, the file is restored on your hard drive, in the proper place in your project's folder structure--but it's not showing in VS.
To resolve this, click the Show All Files button in Solution Explorer:
You will see your file, in a ghostly white icon. Right-click on it and select "Include in project". Save and check-in changes. You are back in business.
Recently I faced this issue, accidentally I deleted some classes which weren't checked in, I searched the name of the classes in my project directory (I was working on D365 project there is a bin folder in C:\AOSService\PackagesLocalDirectory\bin\XppSource) and saw that in the bin folder they were existed so I created new classes with the same name and copy the logic.
Also I should mention that no file was in recycle bin.
We have multiple config files (app.DEV.config, app.TEST.config, etc) and a pre-build event that copies the correct config file to app.config. Obviously the configuration specific files are in source control --- but at the moment so is App.Config, and that shouldn't be.
How can I mark that one file as excluded from source control, but obviously not from the project.
I'm using VS 2005, and 2005 Team Explorer.
It's easy in TFS2012, create a .tfignore file
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tfs/ms245454%28v=vs.110%29.aspx#tfignore
######################################
# 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
# EDIT https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms245454(v=vs.110).aspx#tfignore
# A filespec is recursive unless prefixed by the \ character.
Select the App.config file in Solution Explorer, and choose File -> Source Control -> Exclude App.config from Source Control.
There is a checkin policy (Forbidden Patterns Policy) in the MS Power Tools which lets you screen filenames against a regular expression. See: Microsoft Team Foundation Server Power Tools
While checkin policies are not completely foolproof, they are the closest thing TFS has to enforcing user-defined rules like what you're looking for.
(And as the others have said, you can also cloak a file or folder, which means it stays in Source Control and is visible to everyone else on the team, but it's not copied to your PC until you decide to uncloak it; or you can delete the file, which means it gets deleted from everybody's PCs when they get latest - but neither of these options will prevent such files being added to source control in the first place)
There is an option that is hard to find:
1. Select the file or multiple files in Solution Explorer
2. Go to File -> Source Control -> Advanced
and here it is
Keep in mind:
If you right click a file in Solution Explorer you only find "the most important options" not all :)
If all you want is to have a file in the project but not under source control with TFS, just go into SourceControl, delete the said file, and undo your checkout of the project file (it will attempt to remove the file from the project as well). Then check-in your delete of the file you are excluding. In the solution explorer you should see that there is no source control icon next to the file you're excluding. The project file should list a file there, but that file should now no longer be under source control.
Keep in mind, any other person will now see a missing file in the project when they get latest.
TFS allows you to cloak at the folder/file level. When something is cloaked, TFS won't attempt to sync it (much like a svn:ignore).
When setting up your workspace, cloak anything you want TFS to ignore. A more detailed how-to is here.
This worked for me:
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.
Source:
=">How can I exclude a specific files from TFS source control
Visual Studio 2013 (and 2012)
This feature is available by selecting the file(s) and going to:
File > Source Control > Advanced > Exclude ... from Source Control
This question was asked a while ago but it pertains to the same type of issue I was having.
The Problem:
We want to check in our code.
We then want build our project.
During our build we depend on Build Events to move files around so we have the proper files in place for the build process to complete.
When our Build Event tries to copy the files, we get Access Denied errors.
The Reason:
Team Foundation Server Visual Studio Plugin changes the Read Only attribute on our files to READONLY TRUE when we check in our files.
Build Event Example:
copy "$(TargetDir)SomeFile.ext" "$(ProjectDir)"
Above, we simply need to move a file from our Target Build Path (the bin\debug or bin\release folders) to our Project Folder. In my situation, this was so I could include project built files in my installer. My Installer wasn't grabbing them as part of the Project Output.
The Fix: (nearly kicked my self in the face when I figured this out)
New Build Event:
attrib -R "$(ProjectDir)SomeFile.ext"
copy "$(TargetDir)SomeFile.ext" "$(ProjectDir)"
attrib +R "$(ProjectDir)SomeFile.ext"
We're all having fun with Build Events right? Above I simply do 2 things, I remove the read only attribute, now the files not read only. Copy my file as I was originally wanting to. Then replace the Read Only Attribute (optional I guess) to keep Visual Studio and Team Foundations happy.
And yes... I'm still kicking myself in the face on this one.
I have a similar issue, my App.config contained sensible data (e.g. username) that this data should not by sync with TFS.
The article Best practices for deploying passwords and other sensitive data to ASP.NET and Azure App Service describes an good approach to prevent this issue:
Use the "file" attribute of the "appSettings" element to reference an config file that is not added to source-control
If you have an older version than TFS2012 and thus can't create a .tfignore file or use the File > Source Control > Advanced > Exclude … option, you can try this:
Make a copy of the target file in Windows Explorer.
Undo Pending Changes (if any) on the target file in Team Explorer/Visual Studio.
Delete the target file in Windows Explorer.
Move the copy of the target file to the location of the deleted target file, and rename it so it has the same name as the deleted target file.
TFS now seems to ignore the changes in the target file. If you need to edit the file again, don't use Visual Studio, as TFS will then put the file back in the list of files with Pending Changes.
You can just simply select the file from your Source Control Explorer and Right Click on it, and the select the "Rename" option from there, and you can add ".exclude" at the end of the file name.
And then do remember to check-in the file, and after that you can see that your file is excluded from Source Control.