TFS commits unchanged files

Question

We\'re using MS Visual Studio 2008.

TFS seems to take into account the creation date of a file or something, to determine whether the files should be committed.

Answer 1

Like Martin said, MD5 should be the only thing that matters.* Copy/pasting text into notepad is not necessarily a no-op. Common differences I've seen:

• 8-bit codepage -> UTF8, or vice versa
• plain UTF8 -> UTF8 with BOM, or vice versa
• trailing newline -> no trailing newline, or vice versa

Your XML generation script may exhibit one or more of the same issues. It might also be affected by things specific to XML serialization, e.g., writing the same objects in a different order.

*Exception: if the pending changes on the item include "merge" then it'll always show up in the history -- regardless of contents -- so that merge tracking stays in sync.