How to rollback in Visual Studio TFS?

Question

I'm working on one sub-module of a large project for which is use VSTS 2008.

I have a need to rollback the module to an earlier version (about 4 check-ins previous). I tried to do this in the Visual Studio UI, and finally realized there is no option to rollback.

After some research, I determined there is a power tools download that purports to support rollback via a command-line tool. However, there appears to be virtually no documentation for it.

Can anyone describe step by step how to rollback to a previous version in VS2008? (Using Power Tools or otherwise).

Bonus question--anyone know if we might get more robust rollback support in VS2010?

Answer 1

Right-click on the folder in Source Control Explorer. Choose Get Specific Version. Choose the version that you want to get (by changeset, date, label, etc).

EDIT: At this point your local version will be the version that you want. Check out the changed files and then check them back in. This will bring up the merge wizard and it will probably be complaining about how the server has a newer version than you do. Go through the wizard and merge the files the way you want them (one of the options is to discard the server changes, which is what it sounds like you want). At the end of this process, it may tell you that no files were checked in due to the merge process (or something of that nature), just hit OK and then check in again. This should accomplish what you need.

Answer 2

Bonus question--anyone know if we might get more robust rollback support in VS2010?

Yes. Unlike the Power Tools, which is coded directly against the existing 2008 client API, TFS 2010 has a new API for executing rollbacks directly on the server. This makes them far faster and more reliable, while adding functionality that wasn't possible at all in 2008 such as reverting merge history.