Best practice to commit changes from Visual Studio 2017?

Question

I have installed Bitbucket to be used for Visual Studio (2017) source control.

I am confused especially by one thing. When I create a repository in the Bitbucket cloud (website), as administrator, I can clone it to my local Pc (e.g. using Sourcetree for it) which asks a directory, e.g. e:\BitBucket\something. But after that I can't commit from Visual Studio; the commit option is not there. For that I first have to choose in VS File/Add to source control. This creates a directory .git en 2 files .gitattributes en .gitignore within my project directory. If I would delete those, source control is gone.

But I want to commit changes to the local (cloned) copy of my Bitbucket repository, which resides on another disk (like the mentioned e:\BitBucket\something). Now I have two local repo's and I don't want the one created in my project directory.

Is there any way to accomplish Visual Studio committing changes to a local repository of choice, and this one writing to the Bitbucket cloud repository it is cloned from?

Dick

ic2 · Answer

Hello Ana,

Thanks for your reply. I think the only way for Visual Studio to create a repo is to do that within the project directory. I am not really a fan of Visual Studio as it usually works differently to what I find handy or logical. Visual Studio support usually doesn't know much more either ;) .

I used to work with SVN & Tortoise which could create the repo anywhere. But this system did not write to cloud repo's so it was more important to separate the solution's work disk from the repo disk. And SVN & Tortoise weren't exactly ideal so I think/hope Bitbucket with local repo's will be much better in the end.

Dick

Ana Retamal · Answer

Hi Dick! Visual Studio shouldn't be asking you to "Add files to source control" if the files are already been source controlled (they've been initialized in Git, which is a Source Control system)

Sounds like the directory you're trying to use is not a Git repository yet, can you confirm you're using the same one you just cloned from Bitbucket (and not any other copy that you had in your machine)? That would give us a reason why you couldn't commit, by adding the .git Visual Studio is turning a regular directory into a repository which will be now ready to commit.

I'm not sure I fully understand this part:

But I want to commit changes to the local (cloned) copy of my Bitbucket repository, which resides on another disk (like the mentioned e:\BitBucket\something). Now I have two local repo's and I don't want the one created in my project directory.

Is this the same repo you were trying to use with Visual Studio? If it is, then you'll probably need to contact Visual Studio support team to know why it's not allowing you to commit to an existing repo.

Hope that helps!

Ana

ic2 · Answer

Hello Don,

Thanks for the description. I followed it step by step but without choosing File/Add to source control in Visual Studio, nothing can be committed. As soon as I do chose File/Add to source control, the .git data are stored with the project, not in a separate directory.

So I guess this is not possible.

Dick