Team Explorer configuration via command line

Question

I am trying to automatically configure the TF Workspace for all users when they login on a PC which is different from what they normally code on.

I am currently running the following to configure the workspace via a logon script ./TF.exe workspace /new /collection:azuredevops.url/project /permission:public /location:Server /filetime:current /noprompt

But when the user starts Visual Studio in Team Explorer it is not enabled /online for the user.

Even the "Connect to a project" is empty

How do I configure this in PowerShell or CMD using TF or any other function?

Answer 1

In the command line you are using, I see you set the value of the option /collection as "azuredevops.url/project".

According to the docs about tf workspace command (see here):

/collection: Specifies the project collection.

It seems that the value of the option /collection should be set as the collection URL.

I tried both the collection URL and the project URL in the command, only the collection URL did work, the project URL returned error.

In addition, you can manually try the following command on the machine,

tf.exe workspace /new /collection:<collection URL>

to see if it can normally pop-up the window like as the screenshot shows below.

This can verify if the tf workspace command is working on your machine.

[UPDATE]

The TF.exe is a tool that integrates some interfaces of Azure DevOps. It helps you set up the configurations of TFVC workspace on background, instead of manually filling the parameters via the VS UI. It's not a VS integrating tool that can fill parameters on the VS UI.

When you open VS, to automatically connect the project on the VS UI, you need to use the VS integrating API (or interfaces collection) to achieve the operation on the VS UI. However, currently, we have no such API or CLI to do this. So, you need to manually connect the project after opening VS.