How to identify files updated outside of TFS

Question

We have a nopCommerce website of a client's that one of their IT guys was modifying views directly on the web server. They now want to do more extensive changes so we want to put the baseline NopCom code in TFS.

Then, ideally, we'd like to be able to identify all the views that were changed directly on the web server and have those changed views be recognize as changes in TFS source control to check-in.

Is there anyway to do this in Visual Studio/TFS in batch? ie it would be great to do a check-in locally so all the base code of NopCom was checked in to TFS, then download the website files and overwrite them in the local workspace and have TFS recursively do a diff and determine if any new files were added or existing ones changed and mark those for check-in.... I know...I'm probably dreaming, but any other smart workarounds appreciated as well, assuming this won't work.

Answer 1

TFS does what you want. To set up Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) on your dev machine, you just need to create a workspace and then add your code. Check link: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/tfvc/set-up-team-foundation-version-control-your-dev-machine

When your codebase is under version control, you can develop your app, create and open files in Solution Explorer and write your code, while version control does other work for you. When you check files in and out, it keeps track of your changes and creates a history of your project.

You can use the Diff window to clearly see the difference by comparing folders or files. You can compare server folders and local folders to each other, and view the differences between the contents of each folder. You can compare two server files, two local files, or a server file against a local file and view the differences between the files.

You can get more details about TFVC from website below: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/tfvc/overview