How to: Identify Source Control Item Status in Solution Explorer

When a solution or project is added to source control using Solution Explorer, or when source controlled items are otherwise bound to Visual Studio (see How to: Bind and Unbind Projects and Solutions), source controlled items are integrated with Solution Explorer. This integration is reflected by the addition of source control status icons which appear to the left of the items in the solution and some additional shortcut menu items specific to source control. The source control status icons that identify source control item status are explained in the following table:

Icon	Status	Description
None	Blank	Represents an item whose Team Foundation source control state is unknown.
	Checked in	Represents an item that is under Team Foundation source control and has no pending changes against it.
	Checked out	Represents an item for which the current user has a pending change in their current workspace, and the item is not exclusively locked.
	Orphaned	Represents an item that has been orphaned because of a dependency break.
	Editable	Represents an item that is writable.
	Read-only	Represents an item that is not writable.
	Disabled	Represents an item that should have been added to Team Foundation source control because the item is a child of a source controlled solution or project but could not be added.
	Checked out exclusive	Represents an item for which the current user has pending changes in their current workspace, and the item is exclusively locked by the current user.
	Checked out shared other	Represents an item that the current user does not have checked out in their current workspace, but the item does have a pending change in another workspace (owned by either this user or another user).
	Checked out exclusive other	Represents an item that the current user does not have checked out in his or her current workspace, but the item does have a pending change in another workspace (owned by either this user or another user) and is exclusively locked there.
	Excluded from source control	Represents an item that is not under Team Foundation source control because the user has explicitly excluded the item from source control.
	Pending addition	Represents an item that is not currently on the source control server, but is being added to source control by the current user (has a pending change of add).
	Synchronously opened	Represents an item that belongs to a project that Visual Studio is opening asynchronously.

These icons can be used to determine pending changes as demonstrated in the following procedure.

Note

Under some circumstances, a Check In command may not be available for files subordinate to another file such as Form1.resx that is subordinate to Form1.cs even though they have plus icon for files that can be checked in. If you right-click the top-level file in these cases, for example the Form1.cs file, and click Check In, the subordinate files are also checked in.

Required Permissions

To create a workspace, you must have the Create a workspace permission set to Allow. To add a file, you must have the Check out permission set to Allow. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

To identify pending changes in Solution Explorer

1. Create a workspace. For more information, see How to: Create a Workspace.

2. Add a solution or project to source control and note the blue padlocks to the left of the Solution Explorer items to indicate that the items are checked in. For more information about adding a solution or project, see How to: Add a Project or Solution to Source Control.

3. Modify one of the files and notice that the source control status icon changes to a red check mark. This indicates that the file or item is checked out to you.

4. Right-click the solution, click Add. Then click New Item.

5. From Add New Item dialog box, click Text File, type test.txt in the Name text box, and then click Add.

6. Notice that the test.txt file is added to Solution Explorer and a pending addition control status icon appears next to the new file.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Add a Project or Solution to Source Control
How to: Bind and Unbind Projects and Solutions

Other Resources

Understanding Source Control with Solution Explorer