TFS Version Control and VS Integration : Get Latest on Checkout

Get Latest on Checkout depends on a TFS 2008 server

benryan — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:14:00 GMT

It is worth noting that the "Get Latest on Checkout" feature requires server support to function. In other words, you must connect to a TFS 2008 (or later) server for Get Latest on Checkout to work. There has been some confusion in the forums because the Get Latest on Checkout option appears to be configurable on the client even when connected to a TFS 2005 server. It is unfortunate that we do not disable the Get Latest on Checkout configuration options under Tools->Options->Source Control and under the Team Project settings in this case, but these options are meaningless if you are not connected to a TFS 2008 server.

An override for "Get Latest on Checkout"

benryan — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:25:00 GMT

In the course of working on the improved offline experience for Orcas, we discovered that going online with Get Latest On Checkout turned on was rather painful. Specifically, you would never get a chance to generate a version conflict. This, in turn, meant you would not be offered an opportunity to merge your "offline" local changes with the server if there was a newer version on the server when you went online. This is due to the fact that you pended the edit against the tip version of the file, so all conflict generation regards you as being at tip.

To get around this difficulty, we decided to update our API and add a new flag to the PendChangesOptions parameter in Workspace.PendEdit. This flag is, ForceCheckOutLocalVersion, and it will cause "GetLatestOnCheckout" to be bypassed for this PendEdit call. The PendEdit call is forced to pend an edit against the version of the file that is present locally in your workspace regardless of whether the client or team project "GetLatestOnCheckout" setting is active.

The ForceCheckOutLocalVersion flag did not make it into the Orcas Beta1 release, but it should be available in a later release.

Get Latest on Checkout

benryan — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:05:00 GMT

At the end of November my crew wrapped up our work on the Get Latest on Checkout feature and checked it into the Orcas sourcebase. This feature is obviously targetted at users who are more comfortable with the Visual SourceSafe model of exclusive locking combined with Get Latest on Checkout. Note that the TFS Get Latest on Checkout does not implicitly turn on exclusive locking; you will need to do that explicitly. Details about this feature and others our group has been working on for Orcas can be found at Feature Specifications for Visual Studio and .NET Framework "Orcas" on MSDN.