Visual Studio messages: “One or more files is in a long-running operation”

When working with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) version control (TFVC), there are certain situations when you cannot work with your source files because they are locked. One such situation is when you are currently checking in a (large) set of files.

While a check-in process is currently underway – that is, you are uploading data to TFS – you cannot edit your source code. If you try, Visual Studio will show the following message:

Source Control
One or more files is in a long-running operation and cannot be edited or saved.

Usually, this message is shown when there are network connectivity issues (such as a congested 3G link) or delays in processing by the TFS server and/or its SQL database.

The only available two options are to wait for the check-in process to complete, or alternatively cancel the process. You could of course terminate the Visual Studio process (devenv.exe), but this is probably overkill. Often the final commit of the checking (Visual Studio shows that the last file of the batch is being transferred) appears to take the longest.

Hope this helps!