TFS 2010 Gated Checkin with Exclusive Checkouts

We are using TFS 2010 with gated checkins. I've got some question about what I think is strange behaviour. Look at the following process:

1. File A is checked out by me exclusively.
2. File A is changed
3. File A is checked in
4. 开发者_运维技巧TFS asks to build changes
5. Build started
6. File A is reverted locally to the old version
7. Build succeeded
8. Asks for reconcile -> however during reconcile there are no changes to be made
9. After clicking OK, the File A is checked in with my changes, however my local file is still the old version.

Why does it have this behaviour? This does not seem logical to me. It seems logical until step 8. There it should get the latest version of File A for my local repository. Is this a setting somewhere?

It is my understanding, that Reconcile works by looking at files checked in for the build (shelved, actually), check if the file in your workspace has pending changes, and matches the built version. If they don't match, (ie. you edited in between) it will ask you to merge. If they do match, it will perform an undo, and getting the latest version (which will be the same content, since the TFS server has just checked your changes in).

In other words, if you do not choose to preserve pending changes locally, reconcile won't work and you need to do a get latest manually to get your most recent changes back into your workspace.

Shelving

What happens is that, when you check in, your changes are added to a shelve set. In other words, your changes are shelved. When shelving changes you can choose to roll back your local changes.

For instance when you are working on a problem and suddenly you need to fix another problem with higher priority. Then you can shelve your changes (of the problem you're working on) and roll those changes back locally. This allows you to work on the new problem and check its changes in when you're done. Once finished you can unshelve your previous work (of the first problem) and continue your work.

Gated check-ins

With gated check-ins, shelve sets are created automatically. When shelving you have the option whether your local changes are kept or not. I.o.w. you can shelve changes without rolling them back locally. So when the "Keep local changes" checkbox is not checked you will have this strange behaviour (I also find it very unintuitive).

Locks and 'Preserve local changes' option

The "Preserve local changes" checkbox is disabled however if any of the files in your workspace are locked. Even if they have nothing to do with your changes (also not very intuitive i.m.h.o.). Locks can be put manually on files or automatically in the case of exclusive lockouts (disable "Allow multiple checkouts" checkbox in the projects build configuration). So if you have exclusive lockout and someone modifies a file then it becomes locked and therefore you cannot use the "Preserve local changes" option.

Workaround

To workaround this problem I think you can choose one of several poisons:

• Do not use gated checkins
• Do not use locking and therefore do not use exclusive lockouts
• Do not use colleagues
• Learn to wait for the build to finish and always perform Get Latest Version (Reconcile will not do that because it will only do that for files you have modified in the mean time) or make sure that you automatically GLV when editing a file.
• Do not use TFS :-)

Hope this helps.

Furthermore, if the gated checkin build failes, shelveset files remains as checked-out by build service account. We found a way to undo checked-out files but reconcile doesn't work becuase "Preserve pending changes locally" is greyed out if "exclusive checkouts" is enabled on team project.