TFS command-line interface - unlocking files locked by other developers

One of the developers who works for me went to work on a project in Visual Studio, which is under source control in Team Foundation Server. He discovered that some files were locked for editing by another user, so he couldn't complete his task. The other user was an intern who no longer worked for us, and couldn't be reached to correct the problem. I used TFS's command-line utility, tf.exe, to unlock the files.

First I determined which files were locked, and by whom. I did this using Visual Studio 2010 on the laptop I use for software development. (My installation of Visual Studio includes Visual Studio 2010 Team Explorer.) From the Team tab, I opened the Source Control window. Looking in the Pending Change column and the User column, I could see which files were locked for edit, and by which users.

Then I used Remote Desktop to connect to the server on which TFS is hosted.

I opened a Visual Studio command prompt. On my server, this is accomplished by selecting Start | All Programs | Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 | Visual Studio Tools | Visual Studio Command Prompt (2010).

At the command prompt, I used a command similar to the one below to unlock each file.

tf undo "$/LocalUp/LocalupMenus/CMSBackEnd/bin/CMS.BackEnd.ClassLibrary.dll" /WORKSPACE:INTERN2-PC;mbakiev /server:http://10.2.66.30:8080/tfs/defaultcollection

There are three pieces of information you need to construct such a command.

First, in red, is the name -- as TFS understands it -- of the file to unlock. You can get this by right-clicking the file in Source Control Explorer and selecting Properties. On the General tab, look for the Server Name.

Second, in blue, is the name of the workspace of the user who has locked the file. Get this by right-clicking the file and selecting the Status tab. There you can see the name of the user's workspaceFor example, one of my developers' workspaces is named INTERN2-PC;mbakiev.

Third, in green, is the name -- as TFS understands it -- of the server. To determine this, I clicked the top node of the source tree in the Team Explorer window. Note this has to be in the small Team Explorer pane, not the big Source Control Explorer pane. Then the Properties window will display various information, including the "Url". That's the value -- http://10.2.66.30:8080/tfs/defaultcollection in my case -- you need to supply as the server name.

Not simple, but it worked!

A tip of the hat to this helpful article.