Working with Source Control Workspaces

A workspace is your client-side copy of the files and folders on the source control server. When you add, edit, delete, move, rename, or otherwise manage any source-controlled item, your changes are persisted, or marked as pending changes, in the workspace.

A workspace is an isolated space where you can write and test your code without having to worry about how your modifications might affect the stability of checked-in sources or how you might be affected by changes that your teammates make. Pending changes are isolated in a workspace until you check them in to the source control server.

You can synchronize your workspace with the most recently checked in changes on the server by using the Get Latest command.

If you want to have multiple copies of source on your computer, you can create more than one workspace for a specific source control server.

Maintaining Multiple Workspaces

Team Foundation is designed in such a way that you do not have to create multiple workspaces on your computer to complete everyday tasks. A single workspace can contain multiple team projects. For more information, see How to: Add and Remove a Working Folder in a Workspace. However, you can create more than one workspace on your computer for many reasons. Two of these reasons are described here.

First, you might want to maintain multiple copies of source, each pointing at different versions. This can be helpful if you are working on a new release but need to be able to refer back to the source code from a previous release.

The second reason to consider creating a "test workspace" on your computer is to make it easier to complete code reviews. If you typically build and test other people's code as part of a code review, you might want to create a dedicated workspace.

In This Section

• How to: Create a Workspace
  Describes the steps taken to create a workspace.

• How to: Add and Remove a Working Folder in a Workspace
  Explains the steps that are used to add and remove working folders in a workspace.

• How to: Edit a Workspace
  Explains the steps that are used to edit an existing workspace.

• How to: Cloak and Decloak Folders in a Workspace
  Explains the steps that you must follow to cloak and uncloak folders in a workspace.

• How to: Remove a Workspace
  Describes the steps that are used to remove a workspace.

Reference

Team Foundation Source Control Command-Line Reference

Related Sections

• Getting a Local Copy of Files from the Source Control Server
  Provides information about getting source control files and folders for a team project associated with a local workspace.

• Team Foundation Source Control Walkthroughs
  Lists walkthroughs which explore using source control, customizing a source control check-in, and using source control from the command line.

• Administering Team Foundation Source Control
  Lists topics that apply to administrators of Team Foundation source control.

See Also

Tasks

How to: View Pending Changes in Other Workspaces

Reference

Workspace Command
Workspaces Command

Other Resources

Getting a Local Copy of Files from the Source Control Server