Automatic Checkouts with Team Explorer

June 2007 - Last night while I should have been sleeping, I was thinking why doesn't Team Explorer implement automatic checkouts like Teamprise's Eclipse Plug-in? I can't believe Microsoft left that out. It then dawned upon me that maybe you have to tell Team Explorer you want to "associate" your code with Source Control. Sure enough, I just bound my .NET solution file (and all its associated projects) to Source Control, and now Team Explorer does the automatic check out for me. This is very nice as it saves us a few more clicks when working on .NET code.

I'm probably overlooking this functionality as well, but while we can "Bind" a solution file I can't seem to "Bind" anything else in Team Explorer. For example we have our Process Template modifications under Source Control. Seems like a prudent thing to do since we're the Configuration Management group. Anyway, when using Teamprise and modifying Task.xml, we get the nice automatic check out feature. Unfortunately when we edit the same file in Team Explorer, we don’t get that feature and have to "Overwrite," "Check Out," and "Check In."

I can't say the reason I use Teamprise for most of my Process Template modifications is because of the automatic check out (the real reason is 60%+ of our user base is using Teamprise and I have to support them), but it is a very nice feature. Keep up the good work Teamprise folks!