TFS Disk Structure - and “Add new folder” vs “Add solution”

Question

Our organization recently got TFS 2008 set up ready for our use. I have a practice TeamProject available to play with.

To simplify slightly, we previous organized our code on disk like this:

-EC
  - Main
     - Database
         - someScript1.sql 
         - someScript2.sql 
     - Documents
         - ReleaseNotes_V1.doc 
     - Source
        - Common
           - Company.EC.Common.Biztalk.Artifacts [folder]
           - Company.EC.Common.BizTalk.Components [folder]
           - Company.EC.Common.Biztalk.Deployment  [folder]
           - Company.EC.BookTransfer.BizTalk.sln
        - BookTransfer
           - Company.EC.BookTransfer.BizTalk.Artifacts [folder]
           - Company.EC.BookTransfer.BizTalk.Components [folder]
           - Company.EC.BookTransfer.BizTalk.Components.UnitTest [folder]
           - Company.EC.BookTransfer.BizTalk.Deployment [folder]
           - Company.EC.BookTransfer.BizTalk.sln

I'm trying to decide, do I want to check in the entire c:\EC directory? Or do I want to open each solution and checkin. What are the pros and cons of each? It seems like by doing the "Add Files/Folder" option, I could check in everything at once and it would match the disk structure.

It also looks like that if I check in each solution separately, that creates another working folder in my Workspace. I think if I check in by "add files/folder", I will have one workspace and that would be better.

But most of the books and samples I see talk about checking in projects and solutions.

P.S. I know I need to add more to my disk structure in accordance with the Branch/Merge guidelines, but that is not the question I'm asking here.

Thanks, Neal Walters

Answer 1

It's fine to check in outside of the solution explorer (e.g. from the Source Control explorer). The one downside if you do that is that your solutions will not initially be bound to source control. The next time someone would check out one of those files, they would have to manually (through a dialog) bind to the source control server.

If you have a limited number of solutions, adding the solution to source control is feasible. However, make sure that you have those files in a directory mapped to your current workspace.