TFS 2010 and the check-in of non-modified files

Question

Is it possible to check-in only files that contain modification with Team Foundation Server? I mean is there an option to activate this somewhere?

I need it when an outsourcing company send us almost an hundred source code files and I want to check in only the modified ones.

score 19 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 24 '14 at 10:31

When you perform a check in, Team Foundation Server will not accept items in your changeset that are unmodified, however the rest of the changeset will succeed. If all files are unmodified, you'll get an error and your changeset will not be committed. So if you're just worried about cluttering your history with changes that didn't actually change the content, then TFS will take care of this for you.

However, it can be obnoxious to have a lot of pending changes that don't actually have edits. If what you want to do is only see what's actually modified for code review or just general sanity purposes, the TFS Power Tools contain the tfpt command, which has an "Undo Unchanged" feature that will undo the check outs on unmodified files.

The undo unchanged command has the following usage:

tfpt uu - Undo unchanged

Undoes redundant pending changes. If the state of an item with a pending
change is the same as on the server, then the change is undone.

Usage: tfpt uu [/changeset:changesetnum] [/recursive] [/noget] [filespec...]

 /changeset             Compare the workspace to item states at the changeset
                        version specified instead of the latest version
 filespec...            Only check the listed filespecs for redundant changes
 /recursive             Check the specified filespecs with full recursion
 /noget                 Do not run get before checking

The /changeset option may not be used with filespecs or /recursive.

For example, the following command will do a recursive get on TeamProject, provide a list of files with redundant changes and then prompt the user if they want to undo them:

tfpt uu C:\TFS\TeamProject /recursive

We're using TFS 2017 and it doesn't prevent checking in unchanged files. — Jalal, Jan 03 '18 at 15:30
It does. Although the UI may suggest that you've checked in an unchanged file, the files contents will not be updated in that changeset. — Edward Thomson, Jan 04 '18 at 06:04

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 17 '11 at 15:22

7

TFS ignores unmodified files during the checkin.

However, if you want to see what files are unmodifed before you check in, you can do this (carefully):

Select all files in the Pending Changes window
Right click and Undo Pending Changes
If any files have been modified, TFS will ask if you wish to discard your changes. Click No All.

Locks on all unchanged files will be released, leaving only the changed files in your pending checkin list.

But be very very careful which button you press!

answered Jun 17 '11 at 15:22

Jason Williams

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Tried but doesn't works. I have checked out all the files in the folder, replaced with new ones and made Undo Pending Changes but all the pending changes were gone. Probably this is true only in other situations. – abenci Jun 20 '11 at 08:05

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 17 '11 at 14:50

By default TFS will only check in files that are modified, in fact I don't think it is possible to check in *un*modified files. If you use the command line unmodified and not checked in files will be recorded.

By default checksums are compared to avoid uploading files.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 17 '11 at 14:49

I'm not sure that there's a way to do this within Visual Studio. You might want to try a tool like Beyond Compare to compare the folders to find out which files have changed, then just check out those files. Beyond Compare also has excellent integration with Visual Studio.

Beyond Compare

score -1 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 27 '15 at 21:11

-1

In Solution Explorer, you need to right click on "file" or "folder", and then click "Add files to source control". This is using VS 2015.

edited Sep 27 '15 at 21:11

Wes Foster

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answered Sep 25 '15 at 17:30

tfs-noob

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TFS 2010 and the check-in of non-modified files

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