Git Ignore to Untrack TypeScript Auto Generated Files

When using TypeScript you really don't want the transpiled output files created from the source .ts file to be committed to the repository. This is because the output could be looked at analogous to the /bin generated files which we all know are not to be committed. The TypeScript auto-generated files (.js and .js.map) will be built independently for each user's source, and only the single .ts file should be committed. 

The only exception I see to this process is if there is a restriction on TypeScript compiling on the server (i.e. CI build server) in which case the actual .js file might have to be committed. As long as the TypeScript compiler is present for compilation, only the .ts file should be committed.

To ignore the auto-generated .js and .js.map files for a new project the process is quite simple. Just add some rules to the .gitignore file at the root of your project like below and these files will not be tracked.

# Typescript Auto-generated files
# Note: all files must be TS files in this directory or ordinary JS files could be removed
# Modify as needed to preserve files and be more explicit
BowlingSPAWeb/BowlingSPA/app/*.js
BowlingSPAWeb/BowlingSPA/app/*.js.map
BowlingSPAWeb/BowlingSPA/app/controllers/*.js
BowlingSPAWeb/BowlingSPA/app/controllers/*.js.map
BowlingSPAWeb/BowlingSPA/app/services/*.js
BowlingSPAWeb/BowlingSPA/app/services/*.js.map

The above still needs to be done for existing projects, but if you see tracked changes already showing up for your repository, you are going to have to manually remove them from being tracked since they are already a part of the repository. From the Git docs:

If you already have a file checked in, and you want to ignore it, Git will not ignore the file if you add a rule later. In those cases, you must untrack the file first.

The easiest way to do this is to run the following command against the applicable files using Git Bash commands. I find opening the Git Bash command prompt directly from the directories makes this process easiest.

git rm --cached myfile.js
git rm --cached *.js
git rm --cached *.js.map

You may prefer instead of using wildcards (like above) to manually address each file individually applying the command. It's a 1 time deal to remove the tracking, so it might be best to be explicit as I did it below:

Note, once successfully removed, you can't run the command again or you will get an error message similar to the following:

fatal: pathpec 'myfile.js' did not match any files

This is because the file has already been removed from the repositories tracking so there isn't any command to preform against it.

If using VS.NET, you should see after refreshing that these files are now shown as being deleted from the repository. 

I do recommend that you commit from the Git Bash command line when removing these files. I had mixed results when jumping over to VS.NET to commit, as the deleted files were not shown as changes to the master to be synced to the server. Only once I committed from Git Bash did it actually apply and commit successfully:

After committing and on subsequent updates, the changes to the TypeScript auto-generated files should no longer be tracked and shown as 'Included Changes'

Fixing the "Authentication failed" Message When Accessing a TFS-Git Repository

Recently I've been working with a TFS Project using Git as the source control provider and something locally has gone wrong and I just couldn't remedy in VS.NET directly. The buzz and consensus already seems to be that managing your Git repository with one of the following tools is easier and more powerful than VS.NET IDE integration:

• Git Bash
• Git for Windows
• TortoiseGit
• SourceTree
• Git Gui

I have used Subversion in the past so TortoiseGit was familiar already to me, but the others were not too hard to test out as well. The main goal of what I needed to do was a simple Git Pull to update my local repository to the most current version. I'm using a Windows LiveID to authenticate to the TFS Online Project just fine in VS2013 and made the original clone successfully.

VS2013 initially had no issue doing a Pull, but once things got messed up I decided to use an external tool to fix the problem. The issue is all the tools kept failing authentication with the following error in some flavor below. It didn't make sense because the credentials I was providing worked previously.

"Authentication failed"

Note - it's know that the VS IDE integration with Git does not expose all the functionality available, so if you get into a mess with your repo its probably not going to be easy to fix from VS.NET's tooling. 

It turns out the solution is to modify a setting on your Windows LiveID account to 'Enable alternate credentials'. You can reach this setting by clicking on your user name in the top left-hand corner once logged into your Live account, selecting 'My Profile', and then selecting the 'Credentials' heading.

Here you will need to click the link to 'Enable alternate credentials' and fill in a password, and secondary username if desired or if the application you use can't use an email address for a username:

This allows the use of basic authentication credentials and fixes the authentication issue with the tools I listed above to manage a Git repository. Make sure to use these credentials when authenticating and you should now be able to manage your TFS-Git repository without authentication issues.