Deleting Projects from TFS Online (TFSPreview.com)
After using the online hosted version of Team Foundation Server (TFS) and enjoying the high availability for some time, i recently needed to delete a project. One thing missing right now from the GUI is the menu item that performs a 'delete project'. We should always take care when performing deletes of our projects but sometimes it becomes necessary, especially when learning or playing around with new platforms and features.
TFS has had a number of command line tools for some time which can usually perform the widest range of services (and quite often get called by the GUI commands). One such tool is TFSDeleteProject.exe, and it enables deletes of projects.
It took me a couple of attempts to get the command line syntax right so i thought i would share it here. It's useful to recognise that the hosted version of TFS is actually creating a single default collection to host your projects named "DefaultCollection" and your command line parameters need to include a reference to it as well as shown below:
typing /? into the command line window produces: TFSDeleteProject [/q] [/force] [/excludewss] /collection:URL TeamProjectName which translates to:
tfsdeleteproject /collection:assemblysoft.tfspreview.com/DefaultCollection/ projectX
You will be presented with a login dialog to authenticate and you must be have permissions to delete (This can be set online), but if you are the creator, you most likely already do. The command line console will then show the following:
When the need arises to complete an action in TFS not obvious from the GUI menu, find the command line tool and use from the VS2012 command shell.
Checkout some other musings via my blazor.net and azure blog here carlrandall.net