TFS and IIS - Source Control

Question

We're currently in the process of switching source-control from Subversion to TFS. This works just fine for stand-alone projects/solutions that can be checked out, edited, compiled, and checked back in.

I'm running into a bit of a head-ache trying to get it working smoothly with a particular project/solution set up we have.

It's a solution that has a few C# projects, and an IIS/website/app. The IIS website is mostly classic ASP with some C#/.NET pieces (we are slowly converting the pieces as we go). This way, we test the website locally, and commit the changes to the repository. It's no small website, it's a good 500+ files in total (images, ASP, ASPX, etc).

Normally, in Subversion, we just check out the individual projects, and our solutions that contain it is not under source-control (considering some people have their local IIS instances mapped to different drives). When we edit a file, it gets flagged as being modified, and we can check it in, revert our changes, etc (I use VisualSVN in VS2010 and it offers me all those handy options).

With TFS, when I tried this same path (putting the website in source control, mapping it to the directory my IIS instance is pointing) - the project/solution loads just fine - but the solution explorer doesn't show any indication of being in source control - if I double-click a file and try editing it - it screams at me that it's in Read-Only mode.

So - my question is simply - how do I get TFS to work smoothly with an IIS website in source control, so my solution explorer can show me what files I have locally are OK or are modified (ala Subversion)? Without this "read-only" griping?

I don't mind having to load the IIS portion of the solution as a "File/Folder" project (right now in our solution, the IIS piece is an IIS instance pointing to the IIS site on our machine).

TLDR: How the hell do I get TFS to source control an IIS website, giving me pretty icons in the solution explorer - without having to have the solution in TFS as well?

It's IIS7, by the way.

Answer 1

Team explorer uses the read-only but to see which files have changed locally. And it uses the Workspace mapping to allow you to put one part of the solution on one directory and another part of the solution in another.

You can install the Team Foundation Power Tools to integrate TFS with Windows Explorer which allows you to checkout files before editing them. (this will remove the read-only bit as well).

As visual studio stores the source control bindings along with the solution, not putting the solution in source control is bound to get you into trouble when you're using Visual Studio to edit the projects.

A better solution would be to add all the files of your website to a Web Project, even if they're asp file or any other type for that matter. Visual Studio can handle those just fine. Then use Visual Studio to handle the check-out process for you.

You can then configure the web project to integrate into IIS using the "Use Local IIS" option in the web projects properties. This will automatically map IIS to the right folder when you open the solution.

You can use the a custom workspace configuration to make sure TFS puts the folders where you want them to, you can create a different workspace for every computer if you'd like, though it's easier if the different team members would standardize. And even better if you'd be able to put all the sources in one folder and let the project properties handle the IIS configuration for you.

The next version of TFS/Visual Studio will support both client and server workspaces which will remove the requirement for the read-only bit.

Answer 2

You may want to consider a branching and merging strategy. That is a complex topic but there is plenty of guidance out there. This may be a good place to start:

http://branchingguidance.codeplex.com/

Also, if you look at the properties of your web application I believe that there is an option to "Apply server settings to all users (store in project file)" If you uncheck that I think you can let each developer maintain their own setting for where to map IIS to without saving back to the repository.

Your local copy (called a workspace) can be anywhere you want it to be.That is something taht I believe is user/host specific so your settings should not impact anyone else. It sounds like you may need to configure IIS to point to your workspace or configure your workspace to point to wherever your IIS is looking.