This post deals with the intricacies of Source Control in Team Foundation Server. A common operation is to do a ‘Rename’, particularly on a folder. So how does this affect the changesets for all files in that folder?

MoneyMaker

For this post, assume I have a product called ‘MoneyMaker’ in my TFS Project:

   

We are halfway through release 1.2.7 however the company has just come up with a new naming standard! We decide to check-in our last change to the service contract for safety, it was pretty much done anyway. It becomes changeset: 10081.

Ok so now we have to perform a rename of the folder to match our new versioning strategy. The company wants to use letters instead of numbers for its convention. So the new version will be: A.B.G.

Ok so the rename was a success. Even the local folder has been updated. But I just realised I made a mistake with my last checking before the rename! I want to get an earlier version of that service contract. So let’s see what happens when I use the “get specific version” option on the file and specify the first changeset 10080.

Well, the ‘get’ seemed to do something, but we now have something funny happening:

For some reason, the file now has a status of “Not Downloaded”. The file has even disappeared from the local file system:

So what gives? Well believe it or not, this is completely by design. Think for a moment about that changeset 10080, the first changeset for the file. It existed when the folder name still reflected the old versioning strategy (v1.2.7). So that version of the file at that point in time belonged to a v1.2.7 folder, not a A.B.G folder. So Team Explorer did the right thing: it deleted the current copy, then went to download any relevant files for that folder (A.B.G), of which there were none. So what happens when we try to get that changeset from a level higher than renamed folder?

Well the ‘get’ happens as usual, but takes a little longer since it now has more files to process. But something interesting has now happened: the folder name has reverted back to the original! And the local file system reflects the same information:

Now you can get to the old versions of your files prior to the rename. But this is still a bit of a pain so be mindful of your renames. Have a think about the checkboxes in the ‘get specific version’ dialog to ensure that your ‘get’ doesn’t take all day.