Shelve and Unshelve Pending Changes in TFS

Shelving enables you to set aside the pending changes in your workspace to work on a higher priority task or to share your code with another user for code review.

Perform a Get Latest operation to synchronize your workspace with the latest server version and then build your application to ensure that it compiles prior to shelving or checking in. Doing so gives you an opportunity to incorporate changes to source files that have been made outside of your workspace.


To shelve folders and files from Source Control Explorer

1. In Source Control Explorer, right-click, and click Shelve Pending Changes.
2. In the Shelve - Source Files dialog box, type the shelveset name, for example shelvetest in the Shelveset name box.
3. In the Comment box, type Testing my shelveset, and then click Shelve.

The files and folders are copied to the source control server and are available for other team members to unshelve.

To shelve folders and files from Solution Explorer

1.In Solution Explorer, right-click, and click Shelve Pending Changes.
2.In the Shelve - Source Files dialog box, type the shelveset name, for example shelvetest in the Shelveset name box.
3.In the Comment box, type Testing my shelveset and then click Shelve.

The files and folders are copied to the source control server and are available for other team members to unshelve.

To shelve pending changes from the Pending Changes window

1.In the Visual Studio 2005 Team System integrated development environment (IDE), click View, Other Windows, and then click Pending Changes.
2.In the Pending Changes window, click Source Files, and then select the files you want to shelve.
3.Click Work Items, and then add or remove work items.
4.Select or clear the Preserve Pending Changes Locally box.

Unshelving

When you unshelve a shelveset, Team Foundation restores each shelved revision into the destination workspace as a pending change as long as the revision does not conflict with a change that is already pending in the workspace.

You can use the unshelve command to restore individual file revisions from a shelveset to your workspace, but unshelving does not restore your entire workspace to the base workspace version, which is the server version upon which a shelved revision is based. After unshelving, perform one of the following operations to guard against the introduction of chronological inconsistencies in your code.
To unshelve a set of pending changes

1.In Visual Studio 2005 Team System, click File, point to Source Control, and then click Unshelve.
2.In the Owner name box, type the shelveset creator's name (for example, ADVENTUREWORKS\JuanGo or simply juango) and then click Find.
3.In the Results pane, select the shelveset you want to unshelve into your workspace, and then click Details.
4.If you want to delete the shelveset from the Team Foundation source control server, deselect the Preserve shelveset on server option.
5.Optionally deselect the Restore work items and check-in notes option if you do not want to have the work items and check-in notes associated with the shelveset restored.
6.When the Details dialog box appears, select the shelveset or shelveset items you want to unshelve into your workspace, and then click Unshelve.

Unlike the Get operation, which merges reconcilable differences between two versions of a file automatically and helps you merge conflicts manually, the unshelve operation does not support merges. By removing shelved pending changes from your workspace at the commencement of the code review, you can be assured that any changes your reviewer makes to the shelveset, such as adding comments to a file, do not create merge conflicts during the unshelve process.

source: MSDN