How To Fix Sitecore Connector Version Issues After TDS Upgrade

Background

It is pretty obvious that if you are doing some form of Sitecore development, you are probably using Hedgehog's Team Development for Sitecore (TDS). It makes life so much easier when working on large projects with several team members.

The Upgrade Problem

I am running Visual Studio 2015, and ran into a peculiar problem after updating to the latest version of TDS. I had previously been running 5.1.0.17 and upgraded to version 5.1.0.20.

I was stuck in an endless loop where my connector was showing this error: "Warning: The version of the sitecore connector is from a different version of TDS." An addition, my output window was displaying this message: "Warning: Connector returned version 5.1.0.17. Looking for version 5.1.0.15."

 Warning: Connector returned version 5.1.0.17. Looking for version 5.1.0.15  
 Connection Test Start: 2015-11-05 09:13:54  
 Connection Test Pass: Content downloaded from http://hfedev/sitecore  
 Connection Test Pass: TDS connection test successful  
 Connection Test Message: Connector version local 5.1.0.15 and msbuild 5.1.0.15  
 Connection Test Pass: MSBuild version correct.  
 Connection Test Pass: Sitecore.Kernel.dll and Web.config found beneath G:\Inetpub\wwwroot\HFEDev\Website  
 Connection Test Pass: TDS service files are correctly installed.  
 Warning: Connector returned version 5.1.0.17. Looking for version 5.1.0.15.  
 Warning: Connector returned version 5.1.0.17. Looking for version 5.1.0.15.  
 Connection Test Failure: Failed to complete test.  
 Exception The given key was not present in the dictionary. (KeyNotFoundException):  
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.get_Item(TKey key)  
   at HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.VSIP.Utils.Support.CallServiceWrapper[T](TdsServiceSoapClient client, SitecoreProjectNode project, Func`2 clientCall)  
   at HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.VSIP.ProjectTests.AccessGuidTest.Execute()  
   at HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.VSIP.Dialogs.BuildTestDialog.RunTests()  
 Connection Test Finish: 2015-11-05 09:14:02  

This was pretty weird as I had just upgraded from version 5.1.0.17 to 5.1.0.20.

The Path To Solving The Problem

I started out by taking a bit of an invasive approach to fix the problem, as it had worked for me before after I ran into a similar issue. I navigated to my Sitecore instance, and deleted  the _DEV folder (that contains the TdsService.asmx) and then deleted the TDS assemblies from my bin folder. After this, I tried to install the connector again.

Unfortunately, this didn't help fix the issue, and I now had the following error:

I checked to make sure that my Access Guid in my various projects matched what was in the service's web.config, and they were in fact the same:

Getting Closer

After restarting Visual Studio, and trying my Sitecore Connector again, I started getting the same type of error message that I got initially, except now it was showing that it was looking for version 5.1.0.20 which was the version that should have been installed.

 Connection Test Start: 2015-11-05 09:43:44  
 Connection Test Pass: Content downloaded from http://hfedev/sitecore  
 Connection Test Pass: TDS connection test successful  
 Connection Test Message: Connector version local 5.1.0.20 and msbuild 5.1.0.20  
 Connection Test Pass: MSBuild version correct.  
 Connection Test Pass: Sitecore.Kernel.dll and Web.config found beneath G:\Inetpub\wwwroot\HFEDev\Website  
 Connection Test Pass: TDS service files are correctly installed.  
 Warning: Connector returned version 5.1.0.17. Looking for version 5.1.0.20.  
 Warning: Connector returned version 5.1.0.17. Looking for version 5.1.0.20.  
 Connection Test Failure: Failed to complete test.  
 Exception The given key was not present in the dictionary. (KeyNotFoundException):  
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.get_Item(TKey key)  
   at HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.VSIP.Utils.Support.CallServiceWrapper[T](TdsServiceSoapClient client, SitecoreProjectNode project, Func`2 clientCall)  
   at HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.VSIP.ProjectTests.AccessGuidTest.Execute()  
   at HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.VSIP.Dialogs.BuildTestDialog.RunTests()  
 Connection Test Finish: 2015-11-05 09:44:02  

The next thing I did was I add a new empty TDS project to my existing solution. Interestingly enough, the connector worked like a champ with no issues:

I then went ahead and tested the connection on the rest of my projects and they all worked too!

Yeah baby!

Problem solved? Well, not exactly.

The Final Solution

After successfully testing the connection on all of my existing TDS projects, I went ahead and deleted the empty TDS project. I am sure you can guess what happened next right? The other projects started failing to connect again!

So, what was different after I added the new TDS project? Mmmm. It had a different Access Guid than the other projects. That was weird though. How would the other projects connect then?

I went ahead and created another new, empty TDS project, configured it, did a test and made sure that everything passed. Then I copied the Access Guid from the new TDS project and replaced the Access Guids in all my projects with the new Guid. 

After doing this, I did a test on all the TDS projects in my solution, and every one of them worked like a champ.

Finally, I went ahead and I removed the empty TDS project. This time, after removing the empty project,  all my connections continued to work perfectly!