TFS-放置文件夹中的版本控制文件

Question

We currently use TFS 2010 for controlling some of our .NET projects.

I'd like to know whether it's possible to provide some kind of versioning within TFS for a specific folder on a network share for example.

The idea being is to control release packages (zips) for every release we do. As this bit is done by some other person (not technical and he doesn't use Visual Studio or any tech tool), it'd be great to streamline the process of versioning the zip files for every release.

Technically speaking: We've setup this folder \\servername\\releasezips and every time I drop a file named release.zip, it would automatically commit (push) this file to the TFS server (no comments needed) and furthermore, once the file contents change (meaning that someone dropped another version of the file in there), the system would again push the file to TFS, but with a following version.

Is this possible somehow? I've seen somewhere that I could programatically have some extra control over TFS, using REST API.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Thanks for your tips, Daniel and PatrickLu-MSFT.

As I said, I did want something straighforward, some kind of control similar to what box.com provides, where you associate a local folder on your machine with the cloud. So, once you drop files in the local folder, the small box client synchronizes it along with the cloud. If access the box.com, I can see the different versions of that specific file.

So what I did was, I've created a small .NET app to monitor the folder and any new files dropped in there would get checked in to our TFS server, by using the tf command line (of course ignoring work items or comments).

So, progamatically within the .NET app, it builds up the tf required commands for processing and versioning the recently dropped files and therefore, executes them.

By the way, I could have used the Team Foundation API in order to do the same job, but it would demand way more effort.

Cheers

Answer 2

According to your description, you want to commit/check in files during the build/release pipeline.

It's not a recommend way to check-in generated build files and modify source code during a build pipeline. If you really want to do this, you could edit the build workspace files and use tf commands in custom activity and call the powershell eq:

cd $env:BUILD_SOURCESDIRECTORY

$TFFile = Get-Item "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 1x.0\Common7\IDE\TF.exe"

$tfOutput = [string]( & $TFFile.FullName checkin /noprompt /override:"***NO_CI*** New version is $newVersion." /comment:"***NO_CI*** New version is $newVersion." 2>&1)

Another way is installing TFS Power Tool and use the Windows PowerShell Cmdlets to check in the files. Refer to this link for more details: PowerShell and TFS: The Basics and Beyond

For version the dropped files, you could take a look this similar question: TFS Build Copy to Versioned Folder Basically, you have to customize build definition with custom activity and based on build.buildnumber variable to generate/create .zip file.