Ok, before I explain in detail, here’s my (very odd) setup:
Hardware: iMac
OS: Mountain Lion
Software:
- Editor (Mac): Sublime 2
- Virtualization: Parallels Running Windows Server 2008
- IDE (Windows): Visual Studio 2010
- Source Control (Windows): Team Foundation Server
So here’s my dilemma.
I looooove Sublime 2. However, being a Microsoft shop at my workplace, I have no choice but to deal with TFS. I don’t do a lot of back-end coding, I’m a front-end guy and don’t need all the hefty class and structure tracking built into Visual Studio, so Sublime is perfect for me.
One of the things I love about Sublime is that I can hit cmd+p and pull up any file immediately. The alternative is spending several minutes sifting through our file structure to locate the same file (we have a massive project structure…it’s a beast).
Unfortunately, I can’t just tap cmd+p and pull up any file…I can…but after editing it, I hit save and “uh oh! file isn’t checked out, it’s read only”. I then have to switch spaces, spend several minutes sifting through directories to locate that same file I worked on, and check it out. Switch back, save, and then check it in. It wastes a lot of my time and defeats the time-saving benefits of Sublime’s file searching.
What I’d like to know is if there’s an easier way to accomplish this. I’ve tried a few things and none have panned out. I found a plugin that integrates TFS with Sublime – but that only works for Windows. I tried using Eclipse with a TFS plugin, but I still have to browse through a massive directory structure to check out the file in Eclipse before editing it in Sublime.
Is there any way to streamline this process better? I know it might sound silly to go through such extremes to save a minute or two here & there, but when I do this hundreds of times a day, it starts to save a LOT of time!
Thanks in advance to the community for any help on this!
If you can persuade your TFS Admin team to upgrade to TFS 2012 you will have your solution. TFS 2012 supports “Local Workspace” which does not keep files read-only on disk. You download your source code once through Visual Studio or Eclipse and keep working in ANY editor you want. TFS Client tracks changes on the file system and you just need VS or Eclipse to check-in your work at the end of the day.
For TFS 2008 and 2010 you have to check-out your files manually or with the help of a supported IDE. Those versions only support “server workspace”s and that flavour of workspace keeps all files on disk as read-only.
You might have another chance with 2008 or 2010 tough. TFS 2008 and TFS 2010 on Windows platform supports offline working, which temporarily disconnects your workspace from the server to do your work. Then at the end of the day you go back online and TFS client tries to “detect” what changes were made when you were offline and lets you check them in. This blog post says Team Explorer Everywhere supports offline work. You might need to remove read-only flags of files manually. Offline working is not perfect even on Windows platform and you need to be careful until you get used to it but I believe it is worth giving a shot.