git-tfs: A shelved pending change on a file is required

Question

I'm trying out git-tfs, and I'm trying to unshelve a shelveset by running the following:

git tfs unshelve "Shelveset Name" shelf

I'm getting the following error:

A shelved pending change on a file is required: $/path/to/dir/deleted

"deleted" is a directory that was deleted in the shelveset.

I'm only just starting with git-tfs. I need to checkin that shelveset, so for the time being I can do it with TFS alone, but if possible I'd like to know what might be going on and avoid it if possible.

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

This error message is not one of git-tfs but one of TFS (I just looked at the source code).

I just don't remember exactly how git-tfs manage shelveset because since I switch to git-tfs I never used this feature again. Mostly due to the fact that shelvesets are very badly designed :( And I think that your problem come from that design problem!

With a shelveset, which is in fact a bunch off file diff, you never know what is the root changeset from where it was "generated". So, if you try to unshelve it quite later, you've got some problems (like the one I think you have) because some files or folders were renamed or removed!

I think that your problem come from the fact that you try to unshelve with a checkouted git commit way too recent.

Try to checkout a commit approximately at the date of the shelveset and then unshelve! If it works, you should just have to rebase your commit on your branch (hoping that git handle better the renaming, which it did most of the time).

If it doesn't work, I don't know...

And Internet doesn't help us with this TFS error message :(

edit: since then, I think that git-tfs has been improved and perhaps it unshelve to the right parent commit.

edit2: before investigating too much, use the --force flag that could solve some edge cases

Answer 2

You can now force git-tfs to ignore these errors

https://github.com/git-tfs/git-tfs/blob/master/doc/commands/unshelve.md

  --force Get as much of the Shelveset as possible, and log any other errors 

https://github.com/git-tfs/git-tfs/issues/419

Answer 3

It seems that TFS dislikes trying to unshelve shelvesets that contain deleted files. I did the following and it worked:

• Unshelve in Visual Studio (2012)
• Exclude any deleted files
• Shelve again (from VS2012)
• Use git-tfs to pull the shelveset into a local Git branch
• Manually delete the file(s) that had been removed from the original shelveset

A pain, I know, but it at least helped me salvage the shelveset. For context, this was during a migration from TFS to Git in which we were able to retain history and pull shelvesets into remote branches so developers didn't need to muddy TFS with incomplete checkins.