I have come across an issue that looks like TFS has permanently deleted a branch and all of its history and is not giving me the ability to interact with any of the changesets that were in that branch. Here is what happened:
I created a new branch(A) off of an existing branch(B).
I used A for a few months.
I merged everything in A back to B.
I deleted A by right clicking on the branch in Source Control Explorer and clicking delete and checked in the change.
[At this point I didn't check to see if A could be undeleted, and didn't notice anything amiss]
2 weeks pass
Now I want to view the history of a file that was merged
I go to the visual studio settings and check the box that shows all deleted items
A is nowhere to be found
I check to see if some other branches that I had deleted in the past were visible, and they are still present.
I look in the change history of the parent directory and I can't even see the changeset from when I deleted A.
I have admin access to the TFS database, but don't understand the schema well enough to search for all "delete" changesets.
I've tried to use the API in Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client to get more information, but it isn't providing any more records that the TFS history window did
Update
I just ran a a tf destroy command on a test branch to see what the symptoms are, and the symptoms are consistent with what I'm experiencing. I suspect that this branch was destroyed, now my goal is to find out if destroy leaves behind any information about who or when
Further investigation reveals that a team member on a different project had run a cleanup script during the two week period that had invoked the destroy command, accidentally destroying some of our deleted branches. The advice in How to find out who ran the TFS Destroy Command? revealed who it was, and how it had happened.
Related
Technology used:
Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2015
VB.NET
GitHub
When i was altering skin in my form to design it, i was having trouble undoing my design to return back to its normal design. And as i go to my Form in Solution Explorer and clicked Undo everything had vanished including my code. I'm having trouble on how to retrieve my code ? Is there a way to retrieve my codes and my design or a garbage collector where i can easily retrieve it?
I would be so happy for your suggestions.I really need your Help.
The only way that you will be able to retrieve your old code at this point is if you did a
git push origin master
(or other branch) to github before you made these changes.
If you haven't use Git Extensions - I would suggest downloading and linking it to your github repo for this project. Git Extensions will give you a nice quick view of all your branches and what is sitting in your local repo.
Provided that you did a
git commit
You will still have your changes saved locally and this can be easily identified using Git Extensions.
If you have made the changes after you did a commit, you will see the old code in Git Extensions. From here you will be able to revert selected lines or all of the files. This is provided, that you had at least one major commit in git before this happened.
Update 1:
Based on your comment on your OP you should still have the original files in git. You should then be able to find your code easily via Git Extensions. You should see a list of changed files and from here you can revert them easily.
Update 2: Based on your comments, it appears that you have completely lost your changes. Git is a change tracker - and based on what you have said you did an Undo Changes on git. This means, that git had reset all the changes that it was tracking and went back to the last commit that you made. There is no way to get your changes back unless you had the files stored on DropBox or something similar where files are tracked on each save of the file. With git, changes made are only stored once committed. If you do an undo changes on the git repo before committing what it actually does is a
git reset
This removes all the changes and reverts it to the last commit.
I've checked and found this. I expect this should deal with your problem. Afterall, as long as you didn't intentionally delete anything, they are still in your target folder where you saved it.
If you checked in your code BEFORE the error on GitHub you can try this:(although I am not certain of community edition as I know it works on Pro and Enterprise).
Go to class in question
Right Click to get context menu
Select Source Control>History
Select a prior version
Right Click Reset>Reset and Delete Changes
This will basically say: "I don't care what happened just take me back to my safe place at this point in time with all affected files!". When performing code I cannot stress the importance to having source control and committing often.
I have shelved my 26 java files changes via Intellij Idea 2016.2.1 and I checkout to different branch.
When I came to old branch to check my shelved changes.
I gone a mad now, I lost all the files. I was worked nearly two months
Can somebody help to get it back?
You can restore the state of those files if they were edited in IntelliJ. Use local history to see all the changes made in IntelliJ (VCS -> Local History -> Show History).
Even there isn't Shelf tab in IDE you can find shelved changes as patch files at {ProjectName}/.idea/.idea.{ProjectName}/shelf/.idea/shelf.
Then your can apply any selected patch.
I was able to view lost changes and revert back to them by:
right click on project directory, select Local History > Show History
Find the entry in the history menu that you want to restore. You can examine the files by double clicking on the entry and the files to examine differences.
Right click on the entry you want to restore, and select Revert
Note in my case Git>VCS Operations>Show History showed nothing. Only through the Project Files menu.
Andrei's answer was helpful for my situation where I renamed my project and my previously shelved changes were no longer found under the shelf, but I did run into an issue when applying the patch file because I was prompted to "Select missing base" for various files in the patch. Similar to what is seen in the screenshot below:
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-183910
I was able to avoid having to "Select missing base" for various files by first changing the default shelf location and then applying the patch.
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/shelving-and-unshelving-changes.html#change-shelve-location
Also, I found my patch in this location:
{ProjectName}/.idea/shelf
instead of the aforementioned location:
{ProjectName}/.idea/.idea.{ProjectName}/shelf/.idea/shelf
Maybe this will help someone:
I lost part of my shelved changes in combination with an update of IntelliJ. I'm not sure if the update was the reason but eventually most of my most recent (and important) changes were gone.
I couldn't restore them from local history as this does not "survive" an update of IDEA. But in the files I saw that there still is some data:
C:\Users\myUser\AppData\Local\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2021.2\LocalHistory had a changes.storageData with ~50MB.
Copying the files to the folder of the new version didn't help as the files got overwritten again.
Solution:
I was able to get the old version of IntelliJ (2021.2) here and installed it. This can be done in parallel, without removing the newer version.
Here I was able to retrieve my changes from the Local History and shelve or apply them again.
Hint: Backup the "Local History" folder (or the whole IntelliJIdea20xx.x folder) before you start. I don't remember if I had to copy it in there again or if it worked out of the box. (Just to be sure the local history doesn't get lost).
I've also experienced this bug repeatedly and hence no longer use shelved changes, but rather the Git CLI directly. As of 2022 Jetbrains IDE's still cannot be trusted with their "Smart Checkout" feature, which has a small probability of the total loss of your files (experienced personally in both IntelliJ & Rider).
Unlike another comment here regarding using the Local History, this did not work for me as the history showed nothing. I've also lost many hours of work due to this bug which remains unfixed.
The solution is to use "git stash -u" on the command line, then checkout the desired commit. Once youre done, type "git stash apply" to restore your files. Trusting the "smart checkout" feature is like playing Russian roullette. It's IDE magic that may just fail and you lose everything.
We recently upgraded from TFS 2010 to TFS 2015. Everything appears to be fine post-upgrade, but we are getting the error "The item is locked in workspace (null);(null)." on some source control files. It looks like we have some orphaned locks that need to be tracked down and cleaned up, but the tbl_lock database table is not on the database, so the following select query won't work:
select * FROM tbl_Lock l
LEFT JOIN tbl_PendingChange pc
ON l.PendingChangeId = pc.PendingChangeId
WHERE pc.PendingChangeId IS NULL
Does anyone know how to detect and remove these locks in TFS 2015?
I also installed the TFS power tools, and neither Visual Studio 2015 nor the power tools are picking up the locks.
Updated:
BTW, when I run the SELECT query to find out where PendingChangeId is NULL, I get back no rows. I think the trick is the LEFT JOIN. PendingChangeId would be NULL when tbl_Lock also had no record for the PendingChangeId on tbl_PendingChange (and thus the lock was orphaned). So I'd still need to know where the PendingChangeId should normally be joined to in TFS 2015, to identify which files have a lock that is bad. (Or where a workspace no longer exists, which may be another possible source for the issue.)
And I also still need to know how to clean up those bad locks. I'd prefer to do this using the tools, either via the GUI or the command line, but could also do this programmatically either using the API or the TFS Object Model files for TFS 2015.
I really would rather only touch the database directly as a last ditch resort. And I would also rather use tf vc destroy on the item as a last ditch resort as well, since that would wipe out all history on the files.
Update 2
Aha! I think I found a way to identify the files, and it looks like my thinking for what happened may be correct. Unfortunately, I had to probe the database using a READ UNCOMMITTED query to find the information. I couldn't get at this information programmatically or using the tools. (They all showed or acted like the file is not checked out.) The query that I used on TFS 2015 was:
select pc.* from tbl_PendingChange pc
left join tbl_Workspace ws on pc.WorkspaceId = ws.WorkspaceId
where ws.WorkspaceId is null
This returned the three files that have the (null);(null) lock on our database, because the WorkspaceId listed on tbl_PendingChange does not exist anymore on tbl_Workspace.
How did this happen? Our CI server uses temporary TFS workspaces. I think what happened after the upgrade is that our CI server went to check out the file and apply an update to it. (For example, to increment version numbers as part of the build process.) It checked out the file, but failed to apply the update. (Our tools like working with Server workspaces, but it may have ended up with a Local workspace and thus the file was still checked in Local, but checked out on the Server. Thus the change to the file couldn't be applied.) The code that we are using performs a workspace.Delete operation when the process completes, so the workspace was deleted - even though the workspace still had the file checked out! So this created an orphan record on tbl_PendingChange that isn't linked to any Workspace, and thus the file is still locked with pending changes. But the GUI and tools aren't seeing it as such, because they're not realizing the pending change's workspace is non-existent.
So this brings me back around to how do I fix this? If someone knows of a way to get at these orphaned pending changes, I'd appreciate it. I tried using:
TfsTeamProjectCollection tfsTeamProjectCollection = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(new Uri(szProjectUri));
VersionControlServer versionControlServer = tfsTeamProjectCollection.GetService<VersionControlServer>();
string[] items = new[] { ... server item path ... };
PendingSet[] queryPendingSets = versionControlServer.QueryPendingSets(items, RecursionType.None, null, null);
PendingSet[] getPendingSets = versionControlServer.GetPendingSets(items, RecursionType.None);
but these aren't finding the orphans.
Update 3
I finally installed Team Foundation Sidekicks 2015 and gave it a try - status tool specifically, but then other tools. It's finding pending changes, but not the orphaned ones.
You can use Team Foundation Sidekicks to search and undo lock by following steps:
Install the tool and launch it.
Select TFS server to connect.
Select "Tools\Status Sidekick".
Set the "Search criteria" for the information you want.
Click "Search" button.
Select the locked file and click "Unlock lock" button.
You can using below command to undo the pending changes:
tf undo "file_path" /workspace:workspace_name
Or you can just use below command to delete the old workspace
tf workspace /delete /server:your_tfs_server workspace;username
From Visual Studio 2015 GUIļ¼
File -> Source Control -> Advanced -> Workspaces...
In the dialog that came up, check "Show remote workspaces" and the locked workspace came up in the window. Then selected it and click "Remove".
Details about it, please check this blog and more ways to resolve this you can refer the similar question: What do you do if the file in TFS is locked by someone else?
Update:
According to the sql query. It's looking for .PendingChangeId IS NULL . You can use the similarly tbl_PendingChange under collection database. However, it's not a commendatory method. Since operate directly in the TFS database is not recommended.
The following command has cleared up the pending changesets that were orphaned:
tf vc destroy <itemspec> /startcleanup
After running this command, the file was able to be added back to TFS, and the file could be checked in and out and edited as normal. Running the query:
select pc.* from tbl_PendingChange pc
left join tbl_Workspace ws on pc.WorkspaceId = ws.WorkspaceId
where ws.WorkspaceId is null
also showed that the pending changeset record related to this file was gone as well.
Microsoft's documentation on this command can be found at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386005.aspx. Before using this command, you should review the documentation carefully and be sure to understand the consequences of using it.
Because this command permanently removes files and potenally all history from TFS - and does so recursively - you need to take precautions and be absolutely certain that you are targeting the command correctly. So before using this command, I would recommend taking the following additional precautions:
Stop all user and external accesses to TFS and any other software that may be running from the machine.
Make sure to run a full backup of TFS and any other databases located on the machine.
If you can, take a snapshot in time of the server.
That way if something goes horribly wrong, you will have one or more points to fall back on.
In Team Foundation Server 2010, I have created a source control branch for a major project that I want to be temporary. After the project is closed, I'd like to tie off the temporary branch, merge it into my Main branch, and then delete it. I want to delete it simply so I don't have a temporary branch hanging around for all time. BUT, I don't want to lose the check-in history from this branch.
So, my question is can I delete a branch that has been merged into other branches without deleting that branch's history as well?
Deleted branches are basically hidden, not really deleted. This means they don't show up in Source Control Explorer (unless you have the show deleted files option turned on), but the history for the branch should still be available via the annotate tool and when viewing history on a file in any branch you merged the branch back into.
Why isn't it standard behavior for Accurev to automatically run an "Update" upon opening the program? "Update" updates a user's local sandbox with the latest files from the building/promoted area.
It seems like expected functionality that the most recent files should be synchronized first.
I'm not claiming that it should always update, but curious as to why an auto-Update wouldn't be correct.
Auto-updating could produce some very unwanted results.
Take this scenario: you're in the middle of a development task, but you've made a mistake and need to revert a file that you just modified. So you open AccuRev, but before you have a chance to "revert to most recent version", you are bombarded with 100 files that have been changed upstream including the one you want to revert. You are now forced into the position of resolving all the merge conflicts before your solution will build, including the merge of your (possibly unstable) code in progress.
Requiring the user to manually update keeps a protective 'bubble' around the developer, allowing them to commit (keep) changes within their own workspace without bringing down code changes that could destabilise the work in their sandbox. When the developer gets to a point where his code is ready to share with others, that is the appropriate time to do an update and subsequently build/retest the merged codebase before promoting.
However there is one scenario that I do believe auto-updating could be useful: after a workspace is reparented. i.e. when a developer's workspace is moved from one part of the stream hierarchy to another. Every time we reparent we have to do a little dance:
Accept the confirmation dialog that reminds us (rather verbosely) that we need to update our workspace before we can promote any changes.
Double-click the workspace to view its files.
Wait for AccuRev to do a "Pending" search, to determine whether any file changes are waiting to be committed.
And finally, perform the Update.
Instead of just giving us a confirmation dialog, it would be nice if AccuRev could just ask us if we want to Update immediately.
I guess it depends on preference. I for one wouldn't like the auto-update feature.
Imagine you have a huge project and you don't want to build it every time you start Accurev. But you also can't debug because the source files and debugging info no longer correspond.