TFS 2012 .gitignore .hgignore equivalent

Question

In TFS 2012, there is a new mode for working locally, Local workspace.

This is great news:

• No 'checking out' files
• No more read-only files and issues when working with files from programs other than VS.
• No more 'Get latest' not actually getting latest

But it also means I'll need a way to tell TFS what files to ignore when monitoring the file system for changes. How is this handled in TFS2012?

Answer 1

Found the answer myself, by mucking about in the TFS ui. The answer is that it is handled by the file '.tfignore' placed in the root of your branch.

In 'Pending changes' there was a notification that I had unversioned files. This led me to a dialog where I could ignore stuff by file name, extension, folder name etc. Adding some rules here created .tfignore in the branch root and made that file a pending change. In other words, this works exactly the same way as most other version control systems.