Ever had the issue where your Git repo has a branch that your local hasn't picked up on? This can often happen when a branch has just been created.

The solution is simple just run...

f your using Team Development for Sitecore (TDS) and Github or Git as your source control you may experience an issue where TDS is unable to create/update some of the items in Sitecore, due to a content length issue.

The error will look something like this:

Failed to load version 1 for language en
Length of field content does not match the content-length attribute. File name: name, field id: {id}

What's happening comes down to how Github encodes line ending. If your item contains a Rich Text field you can end up with data that has been serialized with both CRLF and LF as the line feed. This will have been included in the content length. However when you push to Git, the CRLF value will have been removed making the content length value incorrect.

To overcome this issue you need to update your .gitattributes file to treat these files differently. Just add this to your file:

# TDS files should be treated as binary
*.item -text

How do I create a .gitattributes file?

If you don't have a .gitattributes file you may run into an issue with windows where it won't let you create it, due to requiring a file-name rather than just an extension.

To create the file:

1. Create the text file gitattributes.txt
2. Open it in a text editor and add your rules, then save and close
3. Hold SHIFT, right click the folder you're in, then select Open command window here
4. Then rename the file in the command line, with ren gitiattributes.txt .gitattributes

This is one of those great examples of writing a blog post to yourself to remind you how to do something.

If your using Visual Studio 2012 then to add Git support you will need the Visual Studio Tools for Git plugin created by Microsoft's TFS Power Tools Team (http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/abafc7d6-dcaa-40f4-8a5e-d6724bdb980c), if your using a later version of Visual Studio then it's already built in.

If you're thinking in of using Git Hub as your source control provider then the most basic thing you're going to need to know is how do you get the Git plugin to link up to GitHub. Here's a couple of different methods;

Creating a Project in Git Hub

Click New Repository. Enter a new, Select Public or Private and click Create new Repository.

A new repository will be created in Git Hub

Clone the Project in Visual Studio

Now the project has been created in Git Hub you will need to clone it to your machine so that you can start adding files and sync then back.

Open a new instance of Visual Studio and do the following:

1. Open the Team Explorer window
2. Click the connect button
3. In the list of Local Git Repositories click clone
4. In the URL box enter the HTTP URL from Git Hub
5. The second box should auto populate with a location on your hard disk
6. Click Clone

Creating a Repository on Git Hub using the Git Hub app

Rather than creating the Git Hub repo through the GitHub website you can use their app. Once you've got the app installed and logged in do the following:

1. Select the GitHub account you want to add the repo to on the left
2. Click Create button at the top
3. Enter a name and click create
4. The repository will be created in GitHub and automatically sync with the folder on your machine

Adding an existing Repository to Visual Studio

If you already have a repository cloned on your machine but it's not showing in Team Explorer you can add it by clicking on Add

1. Click the Connect button to view the list of local repositories
2. Click add an enter the path to the repository on your hard drive
3. Click Add