Reply To: Integration with Team Foundation Server?

[mpanhuijsen]

I indeed have those Power Tools installed and can check in and check out in the way you describe.
But the problem is that I work with DITA maps and topics, which means that I first open a ditamap, then double-click nodes in that ditamap to open a topic (a pretty standard use case, I'd say). When I open topics in that manner, I don't have an opportunity to check out the topic before I start editing it.

Instead, I need to switch to Windows Explorer or Visual Studio, check out the topic there, then resume editing in XMetal (which thankfully does not require me to close and re-open the topic). This is not a very smooth way of working.

For those experiencing the same problem, one solution/workaround is to use Subversion in combination with TFS. This allows you to edit files without explicitly checking them out. Only when you commit your changes does Subversion/TFS actually perform a checkout. The drawback of this approach is that multiple users can modify the same file independently, which may cause merge conflicts.

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