Mass find & replace in TFS using Powershell

One of the problems that seems to come up semi-frequently is, “We need to update all x files to have y!” The old solution to this was manually going through all x files and updating them to have y. However, this can be accomplished quickly and easily using Powershell.
Here’s an example. We had a number of VB6 project files whose BCO paths were set to use a mapped “O:” drive that no longer existed. Instead, these projects should be using a relative path. There were 100 or so of these projects that needed to be updated, and I was able to check them out from TFS and make the change to all of them in a matter of seconds by using the following script (sorry for the formatting!):

Get-ChildItem "C:\Code" -recurse | 
    Where-Object {$_.Extension -eq ".vbp"} | 
    ForEach-Object {Write-Host "  "$_.FullName; & "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\TF.exe" checkout "$($_.FullName)" | Out-Null; (Get-Content $_.FullName) | 
        ForEach-Object {$_ -replace "O:\\.*?\\BCO\\", "..\..\BCO\"} | 
            Set-Content $_.FullName -Force}

And another example. I needed to update the revision numbers of all projects in a sub-directory to be automatic. Here’s the same script modified to accomplish that. I’ve made this more re-usable by accepting parameter values from the command line.

# example usage: .\UpdateVersion.ps1 -path "C:\Code" -build "1.0.0.*"

# get param values
param(
  [int] $build, 
  [string] $path, 
  [string] $root)


if ($build -eq $null)
{
    $build = Read-Host "Build number:"
}
if ($path -eq $null)
{
    $path = ".\"
}

# $root will be trimmed from start of directory string
# when checking for exceptions
if ($root -eq $null)
{
    $root = "c:\"
}


# $exceptionDirs will not have their versions updated
$exceptionDirs = "test"

Write-Host "Updated the following files:"

# recursively search $path for AssemblyInfo.cs
# if found, update version number & save
Get-ChildItem $path -recurse | 
    Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "AssemblyInfo.cs"} | 
    Where-Object {$exceptionDirs -notcontains $_.Directory.ToString().ToUpper().TrimStart($root.ToUpper())} |
    ForEach-Object {Write-Host "  "$_.FullName; & "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\TF.exe" checkout "$($_.FullName)"; (Get-Content $_.FullName) | 
        ForEach-Object {$_ -replace "(?(\d+\.){3})\d+", "`${ver}$build"} | 
            Set-Content $_.FullName -Force}

❤ Powershell!

Author: Adam Prescott

I'm enthusiastic and passionate about creating intuitive, great-looking software. I strive to find the simplest solutions to complex problems, and I embrace agile principles and test-driven development. View all posts by Adam Prescott