Edit (8/31/2010): The content of this post has been incorporated into my more comprehensive Everyday TFS post.  If you’re looking for a general guide to being more productive with TFS on a day-to-day basis you may consider starting there instead.

TFS has been giving me flashbacks to the days when we used Visual Source Safe. After years of using Subversion one of the first things TFS did was remind me why I hate the check out model. The check-out model offers some nice features such as identifying who else might be working on a file but it really just gets in the way most of the time. When I’m in the zone the last thing I want is to have my train of thought derailed just to check out a file. I don’t want to think about source control until it’s time to check in my changes.

Visual Studio Team System helps alleviate the problem by implicitly checking out files but what happens when files are under source control in TFS but edited outside of Visual Studio? Most of the time this requires going to Visual Studio, finding the file in the Source Control Explorer, and checking out the file or issuing the tfs checkout command from a command prompt. I typically open these files through Windows Explorer or through the corresponding application’s open file dialog so neither of the options really fit into my typical workflow. Wouldn’t it be nice to check out files from Windows Explorer?

TFS Power Tools includes shell integration. Like the shell integration for other version control systems Windows Explorer displays files and folders under TFS source control with icons decorated to indicate their status. The integration isn’t quite as full-featured as what we get with Tortoise SVN but it’s enough to be productive. Primarily it allows getting the latest version, check-in/out, undo check-out, and comparing files with the server version. Conflict resolution, adding, renaming, moving, and deleting files are also possible. I still hate the check out model but the shell integration has made it a bit less painful.

A second headache with TFS’s check out model is that EVERYTHING needs to be checked out in order to do anything with it. Under normal circumstances this is fine but what if you’re only making a small, temporary change that you know won’t be checked in – at least not on purpose anyway? I know I’m not the only one that regularly adds and removes debugger; lines in JavaScript files while I’m bug hunting. There are also those pesky files that Visual Studio automatically checks out but never actually changes. When it’s time to actually do a check-in we’re left with a bunch of unchanged files to sift though to find the ones we actually care about.

TFS is supposed to only check-in files that have actually changed but if you’re like me you like to make a quick pass over your changes before actually performing the check-in. Wading through unchanged file after unchanged file is just a frustrating waste of time. I also like to keep my digital workspace tidy (my physical desktop is a different matter) and all of these unchanged files are unnecessary clutter. TFS Power Tools offers a solution for this too.

The tfpt uu command line utility will examine the pending changes in a workspace and undo any unchanged files. By default the utility will get latest on the workspace before comparing files to the latest version. There are a handful of arguments for controlling aspects of its operation, of note are /noget which prevents the utility from getting latest and /recursive which checks the folders in the workspace recursively. For full information regarding the utility’s options refer to its documentation (tfpt uu /?).

Since I’ve started using TFS I’ve really come to rely on the functionality that the power tools provide. At this point I have very little doubt that the power tools are absolutely essential for anyone working with TFS. Both the shell integration and the tfpt uu command have become essential parts of my workflow since they help minimize the frustrations associated with the check out model.