How to: Shelve and Unshelve Pending Changes

  • Article

Shelving enables you to set aside the pending changes in your workspace to work on a higher priority task or to share your code with another user for code review.

Perform a Get Latest operation to synchronize your workspace with the latest server version and then build your application to ensure that it compiles prior to shelving or checking in. Doing so gives you an opportunity to incorporate changes to source files that have been made outside of your workspace.

Required Permissions

To unshelve a pending change, you must have the Read and the Check out permissions set to Allow. No permissions are required to perform the shelve task. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

To shelve folders and files from Source Control Explorer

  1. In Source Control Explorer, right-click, and click Shelve Pending Changes.

  2. In the Shelve - Source Files dialog box, type the shelveset name, for example shelvetest in the Shelveset name box.

  3. In the Comment box, type Testing my shelveset, and then click Shelve.

    The files and folders are copied to the source control server and are available for other team members to unshelve.

To shelve folders and files from Solution Explorer

  1. In Solution Explorer, right-click, and click Shelve Pending Changes.

  2. In the Shelve - Source Files dialog box, type the shelveset name, for example shelvetest in the Shelveset name box.

  3. In the Comment box, type Testing my shelveset and then click Shelve.

    The files and folders are copied to the source control server and are available for other team members to unshelve.

To shelve pending changes from the Pending Changes window

  1. In the Visual Studio 2005 Team System integrated development environment (IDE), click View, Other Windows, and then click Pending Changes.

  2. In the Pending Changes window, click Source Files, and then select the files you want to shelve.

  3. Click Work Items, and then add or remove work items.

  4. Select or clear the Preserve Pending Changes Locally box.

    Note

    Depending on the option you select, shelving either moves or copies a set of source file revisions, check-in notes, and a list of associated work items to a location that is outside the server and which therefore, does not put you at risk of breaking the build inadvertently.

  5. Click Shelve.

  6. In the Shelve - Source Files dialog box and type a name in the Shelveset name box.

  7. Type a comment in the Comment box, and then click Shelve.

To shelve pending changes from the command line

  1. Click Start, click All Programs, point to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, point to Visual Studio Tools, and then click Visual Studio Command Prompt.

  2. Type cd path, where path is the location of the directory used to store your personal copy of the files in the server (for example, c:\projects).

  3. Type tf.exe shelve shelvename and then press Enter.

  4. In the Shelve - Source Files dialog box, click OK to complete the shelve operation.

    Note

    For the full syntax available for the shelve command, see Shelve Command.

Unshelving

When you unshelve a shelveset, Team Foundation restores each shelved revision into the destination workspace as a pending change as long as the revision does not conflict with a change that is already pending in the workspace. For more details about what happens during the unshelve process, see Working with Source Control Shelvesets.

The two most common reasons why you might want to unshelve a shelveset are:

  • No-touch code reviews (or workspace impersonation)

  • Integrate shelved pending changes into your work going forward.

You can use the unshelve command to restore individual file revisions from a shelveset to your workspace, but unshelving does not restore your entire workspace to the base workspace version, which is the server version upon which a shelved revision is based. After unshelving, perform one of the following operations to guard against the introduction of chronological inconsistencies in your code.

To unshelve a set of pending changes

  1. In Visual Studio 2005 Team System, click File, point to Source Control, and then click Unshelve.

  2. In the Owner name box, type the shelveset creator's name (for example, ADVENTUREWORKS\JuanGo or simply juango) and then click Find.

  3. In the Results pane, select the shelveset you want to unshelve into your workspace, and then click Details.

  4. If you want to delete the shelveset from the Team Foundation source control server, deselect the Preserve shelveset on server option.

  5. Optionally deselect the Restore work items and check-in notes option if you do not want to have the work items and check-in notes associated with the shelveset restored.

  6. When the Details dialog box appears, select the shelveset or shelveset items you want to unshelve into your workspace, and then click Unshelve.

Unlike the Get operation, which merges reconcilable differences between two versions of a file automatically and helps you merge conflicts manually, the unshelve operation does not support merges. By removing shelved pending changes from your workspace at the commencement of the code review, you can be assured that any changes your reviewer makes to the shelveset, such as adding comments to a file, do not create merge conflicts during the unshelve process.

Unshelve can also be performed from the command line using the Unshelve Command.

See Also

Tasks

How to: View and Manage All Pending Changes in Your Workspace

Reference

Shelve Command
Unshelve Command

Concepts

Working with Source Control Shelvesets
Pending Changes