TFS Build error TF215097 : The file exists

I had a weird problem with a failed build in TFS2010 today:

TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition \xxxx\xxxx: The file exists.

This appears to be caused by the build server not being able to manage more than ~65k files in its temp folder.  On quiet day the server seems able to manage its own file garbage collection but when the teams are hitting the server hard the files build up without being cleared down quickly enough and the error occurs.

The simple solution is to simply delete the contents of the following path on the server:

C:\Users\TFSSERVICE\AppData\Local\Temp

Team Foundation Server 2010 tf commands

Destroying deleted items

The following commands allow you to destroy files in TFS Source Control that are already marked as deleted.  The first step is to find the specific filename with its deleted X postfix.  Open a VS Command Prompt and navigate to your workspace mapped path.  Use the tf dir command to find the files:

tf dir /deleted

Then use the tf destroy command.  Note the absolute source path that doesn't necessarily match the first part of your local mapped path.

tf destroy "$/myProject/main branch/whatever.vb;X188"

Removing unwanted merge candidate changesets

The TFS Source Control merge tool provides a list of candidate changesets that can be merged between a source and target branch.  Once these have been merged they disappear from this list, but it's possible to have changesets for branch specific operations in the list that will never be merged (i.e. changes to web.config that only apply to the build of that branch).  These can be removed using the command line by opening the VS Command Prompt and navigating to the workspace mapped path.  From there the following command applies:

tf merge "$/MyProject/Release Branch" "$/ MyProject /Main Branch" /discard /recursive /version:C5720~C5720 

TFS 2010 Wiki Search Fix

Team Foundation Server 2010 - Team Wiki has the search function disabled by default (the reason for this is a bit of a mystery...


This tells you how to switch it on:
http://vsts-fu.blogspot.com/2009/02/fixing-project-portal-search.html

• the SharePoint Central Administration console link is in Admin Tools
• if the SharePoint Central Administration console won't restart, it's probably the process identity on it's app pool in IIS (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa952804(v=bts.20).aspx)
• if the Windows SharePoint Services Search service won't start, it's probably the LogOn that needs changing (http://technobuff.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/windows-sharepoint-services-search-service-cannot-start/)
• once initially setup, you'll need the indexer to run before search will work!