Visual Studio 2015 TFS .tfignore file

Question

I want to ignore a folder (and its content) in a visual studio 2015 solution from beeing checked-in into tfs.

I created a file called '.tfignore' in the root of the project that is containing the folder I want to exclude.

The content of the file looks like this: /Dist

This is not working at all. Even if I add *.cs to the file, nothing gets excluded.

Does somebody know where the problem is? How do I wire this up in a working way?

Answer 1

First, please make sure your .tfignore file created without any problem. This file does not have any suffix. One way to create it suggest you to rename a new.txt file with "tfignore." It will auto change to right .tfignore file.

You can also use the auto automatically generated .tfignore file, follow below steps:

1. In the Pending Changes page, in the Excluded Changes section, choose the Detected changes link.

The Promote Candidate Changes dialog box appears.

2. Select a file, open its context menu, and choose Ignore this local item, Ignore by extension, Ignore by file name, or Ignore by folder.

3. Choose OK or Cancel to close the Promote Candidate Changes dialog box.
4. A .tfignore file appears in the Included Changes section of the Pending Changes page. You can open this file and modify it to meet your needs.

More info please check the Customize which files are ignored by version control from MSDN Link:Add files to the server

Answer 2

If your .tfignore file is in the solution root folder, adding a \Dist to it will make TFS ignore the Dist folder only inside the root folder. For instance, if you create a Dist folder inside a subfolder (e.g any of the projects folder in the solution), it won't work.

In that case, you need to use just Dist rather than \Dist, then rule will aply to the .tfignore root folder and all its subfolders.

This only apply to folders.