Question

We have global lists in TFS that are used in custom fields on our work items. Our previous global list maintainer made a mistake and called one of the global list items “FooBar” instead of “Foobar” (capital B vs small B).

I’ve been trying to “rename” this item to the correct spelling of “Foobar” by deleting the original item (FooBar) and creating the correct item (Foobar). After deleting “FooBar” and saving the global list, I refresh TFS and check the global list and the item is definitely removed. I add “Foobar” to the same global list as what “FooBar” was in and save. However, “Foobar” didn’t save and “FooBar” is back in the list. It seems that the TFS global list items are case insensitive and that global list items aren’t ever really hard-deleted from the TFS db.

Is there any way that I can rename FooBar to Foobar and make it stick? Even if it involves editing a record in the db (after backing it up). I’m using Visual Studio 2010, Team System 2010 and Power Tools Dec 2011.

Answer 1

There is no supported way to update the case of a string in a global list.

However, if you are willing to void the supportability of your server and modify the database directly, you will find what you need in the dbo.Constants table. Just update the String and DisplayPart columns.