TFS Incremental build error - Unable to perform the get operation because the file already exists locally

Question

I'm trying to enable incremental build of my VS solution. In the GUI for xaml build process template, I set "Clean Workspace" to "None" and added /p:IncrementalBuild=True as an MSBuild argument. I then checked in changes to a file, but when I run my TFS build, I immediately get the following error:

Unable to perform the get operation because the file already exists locally

Exception Message: One or more errors occurred while performing a Get operation. (type GetException)
Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Workflow.Activities.SyncWorkspaceInternal.ThrowIfErrorsOccurred.Execute(CodeActivityContext context)
   at System.Activities.CodeActivity.InternalExecute(ActivityInstance instance, ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager)
   at System.Activities.Runtime.ActivityExecutor.ExecuteActivityWorkItem.ExecuteBody(ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager, Location resultLocation)

I believe TFS gets my file but cannot overwrite the existing file on the build agent and errors out. How can I force it to overwrite the file?

Answer 1

The file is writable. When there's a writable file, get will not overwrite it unless the /overwrite option is used. However, you would need to figure out how the file is becoming writable. You may want to go back to the default option of creating a new workspace, running a build with verbose logs, and see what is making the file writable.

Answer 2

In XAML Build, you can add a GetOptions input for the SyncWorkspace activity. <mtbwa:SyncWorkspace _locID="Activity037" _locAttrData="DisplayName" DisplayName="Get Workspace" VersionOverride="[GetVersion]" Workspace="[Workspace]" GetOptions="[Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.GetOptions.Overwrite]">

See DefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml as a go-by.

TfvcTemplate.12.xaml doesn't expose a way to do it.