Visual Studio Code with Git branching and DevOps

Question

I am a little bit confused how branching is working in Visual Studio Code with Git. I came to Git world from MSFT and try to understand how to handle the branching in Git.

I have 2 branches: DEV and DEV-ScriptEditorWebPart.
DEV is the branch where all the final version of the code are add to deploy to DEV environment for testing.
DEV-ScriptEditorWebPart is feature branch where new code is generated.

When I look at the DevOps files are stored correctly.

DEV BRANCH

DEV-ScriptEditorWebPart

As you see feature branch contains folder that is not in DEV, which what I expect.

From my previous experience with MSFT I would expect the same would be in VS Code. However, it is not the case or at least I am missing some fundamental knowledge of how Visual Studio Code is working with Git and DevOps.

Following the snapshot of the Visual Studio Code, I have opened. Initial Branch is DEV. As you can see, it also shows me a lot of untracked files from another branch in Source Control which should not be there.

When I try to switch it to feature branch I am getting next message

Per my understanding it is correct. DEV doesn't have this Omers.Embed folder and for sure for DEV, it is untracked. However, I cannot switch to the folder where these files belong to.

What might be the problem here?

Answer 1

"if you want to keep them" - it is not exactly what I want. I just try to figure out how to use git with branches without causing any errors.

Let's say I have branch DEV, DEV-UpdatedFiles, DEV-AddedFiles, DEV-DeletedFiles.
Ideally I want following:
-- I want to be able to switch between DEV to DEV-UpdatedFiles or DEV-AddedFiles or DEV-DeletedFiles without exception similar the ones I explained before or at least to understand why it happens. Once it switched I would like to see in the Source Control Pane files that belong to corresponded branch only. For instance, I don't want to see added files from DEV-AddedFiles branch in, let's say, DEV-UpdatedFiles.
-- I want to able to switch between feature branch to DEV and in source control pane to see no files, because I didn't do any updates in DEV.

It is what I want eventually to achieve, which cannot be done with Git as I understood. So, at least I want to be sure, I can switch between DEV to feature branch and back without exception and I don't want to loose files accidently.

So, let me rephrase your suggestion. When next time I will get the same exception when I try to switch between DEV to feature branch I need to run

 git add -A 
 git stash
 git pull

if -A is not working I should try next code:

 git fetch --all
 git reset --hard origin/<branch-name>

Answer 2

Hi @RaytheonXie_MSFT ,

When you say use this command or another could you provide more information?

You say "use git clean --dry-run". When should I use it, with DEV branch or feature one? What exactly would happen with files? Are they going to be deleted from the folder?

If command is used in DEV branch, what would happen when I switch to feature branch? Will it pull all the files from DevOps? and so on....

Can you give the step by step instructions if it happens again? As I said currently I just used checkout command with force to switch to another branch.

Answer 3

Hi @Pavel Brokhman ,
We can use git clean --dry-run to delete the files not git add.
That command will output a list of files that Git will remove if you run git clean -f, and might avoid to remove something you didn’t want to

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Answer 4

There is something that I would like to add.

When I do switch in the VS Code it executes next command:
git checkout -q DEV-ScriptEditorWebPart

This command cause the issue I have described before.

However, when I add -f it works and now it switches to feature branch and there are no untracked files.

It is really confusing. Why do I see untracked files for the branch where these files do not belong too originally and how to avoid it? I don't want to do some global changes that would stop tracking it. Eventually I will merge feature branch to DEV. So, in the future DEV will contain new files as well.