New empty folders problem in solution explorer

Hi,

Today I tried to solve a synchronization problem between VSTS 2008 and Team System, where cs projects contained folders and those folders do not exist in source control.

Furthermore, The programmer tried to delete those zombie folders from the solution explorer and got error message claiming those folders do not exist.
Well, They Don't, actually.

After handling this situation (by excluding zombie folder from project) I managed to recreate the problem:

In solution explorer, under any project, we add a new folder:




The problem is that the only action pending is the update to the project file.
No folder creation is pending in source control explorer !





Then we perform check in pending changes, No folder creation is pending.





After that check in, everyone working with that project will have a reference to a non existing folder.
This problem appears only when we create new folder from the solution explorer, not from source control explorer.

The trigger for creating a new folder in source control is adding new items under that folder.

So we can use workarounds:

Workaround 1. Perform check in only after adding new items under that folder.
When we create new items under this new folder, this folder now exist in source control explorer.


Notice that even now, this new folder is NOT marked as in pending add but will be added after check in...



Or -  Workaround 2: Go to Source control explorer and create the folder.

This workaround will be used if we insist to add a new empty folder to source control.

We add the new folder in the source control explorer:



Now when we check in, we can notice this new empty folder in pending add state: