Preserving file timestamps on a tf get /all

Question

Is there a way to make "TF GET" preserve the timestamp for each file.  That is, I would like to see the resulting local workspace files all have the dates associated with their last checkin and not the date/time of when TF GET wrote them to the workspace?  ClearCase has this feature which we have found useful in the past.

Answer 1

Unfortunately no - there is no way to do this out of the box. You can write utility that does Get and then set the modification date/time on the files.

We decided that this is the right thing to do because most build systems require timestamp update to analyze the dependencies correctly.

We may add this option after Orcas.

Answer 2

I'll vote for that option.  Thanks for your quick reply.

Answer 3

I am not sure I "grok" your comment about build systems.  Our build systems start off by scratching all source code completely and then getting a complete set of source.  It is convinient if the date/time was the same on the file system as the last time it was checked in.  Visual Source Safe and other other SCM I have used systems work this way.

Answer 4

Your approach is very heavy weight and it guarantees 100% correctness. However, for example in our case, with Gauntlet (http://www.woodwardweb.com/dotnet/000164.html) we want to do build as fast as possible (because it is central point of checkins for whole product unit) so we do not nuke all the sources and we don't do clean build by default.

I agree that for the personal use this feature would be useful - as I mentioned we are planning on adding it in future release.

Answer 5

A major reason we remove everything and start over is to ensure that we don't have any "stale" build artifacts around from prior builds.  We have been bitten by this in the past.  We don't have gigantic amounts of source code (< 1M lines) so the compilation step is never a big deal.  And using a reasonably new Core-2 Duo processor for the build system helps a lot too!

Answer 6

Michal Malecki - MSFT wrote:

...I agree that for the personal use this feature would be useful - as I mentioned we are planning on adding it in future release.

Is this feature available in TFS 2008 ?

 

Answer 7

You don't do clean builds? You probably have lots and lots of code. 

I need to sync to the latest daily and because I have no idea which are really just changed today I have to import the lot - every day.  Quick and dirty doesn't work for me.  If it were my choice I wouldn't touch this awful product.  This is really basic stuff.  </rant>

Answer 8

Our official nightly builds are clean builds.  However, not even they do a get /all.  They use the power tools (tfpt scorch and treeclean) to ensure the workspace is pristine.

You can see which files have changed "today" a number of ways:
- tf get /preview
- tf folderdiff /version:W~T
- tf history /version:W~T

You can also store a history of exactly what file versions were retrieved & when using the Powershell tools Brian Harry announced yesterday.
# store sync history on the client
$a = update-tfsworkspace
# store on the server
update-tfsworkspace | new-tfslabel stuffSyncToday

Answer 9

Is this feature available now?

Answer 10

no. still in the backlog.