Webprojects gets automatically checked out

IsaackRasmussen · Post by **IsaackRasmussen** » Thu May 15, 2008 8:10 am

Hi,

Me and my colleagues are running VS2008, on Vista SP1, latest SourceGear Vault client(March 27) and with the Enhanced Vault Client plugin.

We experience when developing, that our 3 Webservice projects gets checked out automatically, it seems to happen every few minutes so it also becomes a race condition. If my colleagues checks it out first, then mine will popup and fail since it's already checked out exclusively.

Our project files are not on the merge able list... would that be the solution? I guess the project files would still get checked out.

Beth · Post by **Beth** » Thu May 15, 2008 12:32 pm

Check out this KB article: Visual Studio Enhanced Client FAQ

Look under the Common Problems heading for the link "My project files constantly get checked out exclusively, which is a real pain. What’s the deal?"

IsaackRasmussen · Post by **IsaackRasmussen** » Thu May 15, 2008 2:57 pm

Let me note that even when not touching any of the files in that particular project(1 project out of 21 others in one solution), the project itself gets checked out.

I have experienced that while talking on the phone and not touching the keyboard, it pops with a warning saying that the project is locked exclusively by my colleague.

The tips you sent, I think, will not stop this auto-checkout, just not bug us anymore and it should be safe since we actually don't change it.

Beth · Post by **Beth** » Thu May 15, 2008 3:38 pm

Can you post a screenshot?

I'm going to try and reproduce this, but it may take me some time.

IsaackRasmussen · Post by **IsaackRasmussen** » Fri May 16, 2008 2:05 am

Hi,

I've just emailed you a screenshot. The first thing I did today was to open VS2008 and wait... and after a few minutes it popped up.

It's just a normal Messagebox saying that the project has already been checked out. In the Project Explorer, you can then also see the checkout icon.

I just realized, that the delay may actually be related to my Auto Refresh setting which is set to 2minutes.

IsaackRasmussen · Post by **IsaackRasmussen** » Fri May 16, 2008 2:17 am

Also, we were actually already using scenario 2b

Option 2b:
Move a bit toward edit-merge-commit, but not all the way: turn off only the “Always request exclusive locks” option.

Except that we haven't made our project files mergeable.

But... the problem I'm describing, is it a misconfiguration or a limitation in VS source control architecture?

ian_sg · Post by **ian_sg** » Tue May 20, 2008 8:26 am

When this automatic checkout occurs, does the file also change? After a phantom checkout, do a Save All then Diff the project file. If the file has changed, what's changed?

IsaackRasmussen · Post by **IsaackRasmussen** » Thu May 22, 2008 7:00 am

Ok, I think I know what the problem is now.

It's the mini webserver that Visual Studio launches everytime and it choose a random port. That random port number gets written down in the project file which makes it change.

ian_sg · Post by **ian_sg** » Thu May 22, 2008 8:10 am

That makes sense. Using IIS or assigning a specific port should make the phantom checkouts go away.