Workfold command (Team Foundation Version Control)
TFS 2017 | TFS 2015 | TFS 2013
Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2017 | Visual Studio 2015 | Visual Studio 2013
The workfold command creates, modifies, or displays information about the mappings between your workspace folders and the folders on the Azure DevOps server for TFVC.
Prerequisites
To use the workfold command, you must be the owner of the specified or implied workspace or have the global Administer workspaces permission set to Allow. For more information, see Default TFVC permissions.
Syntax
tf workfold localfolder [/login:username,[password]]
tf workfold [/workspace:workspacename] [/login:username,[password]]
tf workfold [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl] [/workspace:workspacename] [/login:username,[password]]
serverfolder
tf workfold [/map serverfolder localfolder] [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl]
[/workspace:workspacename][/login:username,[password]
tf workfold /unmap [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl] [/workspace:workspacename]
[/recursive] (serverfolder|localfolder) [/login:username,[password]]
tf workfold /cloak
serverfolder [/workspace:workspacename] [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl] [/login:username,[password]]
tf workfold /decloak serverfolder
[/workspace:workspacename] [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl][/login:username,[password]]
Parameters
Argument
Argument
Description
workspacename
Specifies the name of the workspace on which the command operates for the /workspace option.
serverfolder
Specifies the name of a Team Foundation version control server folder.
localfolder
Specifies the name of a local folder.
TeamProjectCollectionUrl
The URL of the project collection that contains the folders that you want to compare with server folders (for example, http://myserver:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection/).
username
Provides a value to the /login option. You can specify a username value as either DOMAIN\UserName or UserName.
Option
Option
Description
/workspace
Specifies the name of the workspace to work in.
/map
Specifies an association between a local folder and the Team Foundation version control server folder. By default, the workfold command uses this option, even if unspecified, unless /unmap, /cloak, or /decloak is specified.
/unmap
Specifies which folder mapping should be removed from the workspace.
/cloak
Specifies that the folder should be excluded from any version control actions made in the workspace.
/decloak
Decloaks a folder so the folder can be retrieved into the workspace.
/collection
Specifies the project collection.
/login
Specifies the user name and password to authenticate the user with Azure DevOps.
Remarks
You can use the workfold command of the tf command-line utility to create and edit workspace mappings. A workspace mapping creates a client-side folder into which all files and subfolders in the Team Foundation version control server folder are retrieved when you execute a tf get operation. This get will not work if the client-side folder is cloaked.
You can also specify an asterisk (*) wildcard to map a Team Foundation Server folder and its immediate items to your local workspace. This is often referred to as single folder mapping.
For more information on how to find the tf command-line utility, see Use Team Foundation version control commands.
Options for Workspace Mapping
A workspace mapping is a list of active and cloaked items. You can add Team Foundation version control server items to the mapped list in the workspace using the /map option. You can also exclude an item from the workspace explicitly by using the /cloak option. You can only cloak the items that have a mapped parent. Cloaking is an effective way to improve the speed of batch Get operations and to conserve space on disk.
Use cloaking with discretion. To avoid compilation and integration problems, you should only cloak those items that you know to be outside the scope of your current and future projects, such as images and external documentation files.
You can use the /unmap and /decloak options to selectively delete mapped and cloaked entries from the workspace mapping.
How Workspace Mappings are Applied
By default, workspace mappings are applied recursively. When you map a local folder to a Team Foundation version control server folder, the system implicitly creates a mapping between all its current and future subfolders. For example, if you map $/projects to c:\projects, subsequently add a project called $/projects/project_one, and then run a get of the workspace, Team Foundation automatically creates a local working folder named project_one in the C:\projects directory.
In this example, you can use a wildcard, "*", to map a server folder and its immediate items to your local workspace:
tf workfold $/projects/MyTeamProject/* C:\MyLocalWorkfold\MyTeamProject
In this example, you can override the automatically-created mapping between $/projects/project_one and C:\projects\project_one by using the workfold command as follows:
tf workfold $/projects/project_one C:\DifferentWorkfold
Mappings under Cloaks
Mappings of uncloaked folders that are located beneath a cloaked folder in the version control hierarchy can be mapped to your local workspace.
Examples
The following example displays the mappings for the workspace in which c:\projects resides.
c:\projects>tf workfold
The following example cloaks the c:\projects\lib folder.
c:\projects>tf workfold /cloak c:\projects\lib
The following example displays the mapping for the local file word.cs.
c:\projects>tf workfold word.cs
The following example maps the folder C:\DifferentWorkfold to the Team Foundation version control server folder $/projects/project_one and replaces the previous workspace mapping for the $/projects/project_one Team Foundation version control server folder.
c:\projects>tf workfold $/projects/project_one C:\DifferentWorkfold