Question: Any opinion on branch per developer approach? This is the first time I have come across it someplace and feel that there's just no reason too. I've been through the branching guidance and even use your article in MSDN magazine from earlier this year as reference. The development teams are offshore...

As we begin planning the next release of the branching guidance, a top priority is to address how to manage shared code dependencies (the Dependency Repository / Shared Code issue). The newly release Build Customization Guide (now available for download from Codeplex) begins to address this issue, primarily...

I think most would agree that the Rangers Team has already done a fantastic job with the Rangers Branching Guidance. This is not meant to be a self-serving comment, since the current branching guidance is the result of the hard work of many others in addition to myself. For the past couple of years I...

Caution: Renaming branches in TFS 2010 is a very bad idea unless you follow a very specific set of steps: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chandrur/archive/2010/06/09/renaming-branches-in-tfs-2010.aspx . In TFS 2010, Unshelve will follow pending renames but it will not follow renames committed between when the...

Customer scenario: How should I isolate (and integrate) changes when working with: 3 parallel efforts (two parallel development efforts, working on separate releases of the product and production support) Production(version 2.0) with the need to issue hotfixes on then current production version Development...

A customer asks the following question: “ We are building factory machine. New machines are usually delivered with the current stable software version. We don't do regular updates because our customers prefer stability over new features. After reading the Rangers Branching Guide I have some questions...

  Recently I got a request from a customer to help them estimate the expected size of a proposed TFS 2010 environment, and to help them estimate a ten-year growth prediction. This customer was focusing narrowly on the overhead required to create a new branch. This customer was asking "how much...

Question from a customer of the Rangers Branching Guidance ( http://tfsbranchingguideiii.codeplex.com ) “My company has a major release every 3 months.  In between major releases we have monthly maintenance releases. (Similar to the "Advanced Branching Plan") Our monthly release usually...

When TFS does a merge, it bases the merge on prior merge history, not on the actual contents of the source and target files. There are many reasons why this is necessary, some of which will become apparent by reading this post. For example, a merge may result in a conflict (changes made to both the source...

In the February 2011 issue of MSDN Magazine, I wrote an article on Shared Code (or code dependencies as some call it). Often I see a common problem with relative references to dependent assemblies or projects. If relative references are not created properly for a solution that is branched, the relative...

Read the latest issue: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg602477.aspx Co-authored with Willy-Peter Schaub. Now that the article is published, I will go into more detail on this topic. Space limitations in the article prevented being as detailed as I would have liked.

When you merge in TFS 2010, you have two choices: Merge al l changes up to a specified version, which can be one of the following: Latest Version Date Label Changeset Workspace Version Or, merge Selected Changesets, where you select one or more changesets from a list of changesets that are in the source...

Download the latest VS ALM Rangers Branching Guidance Here: http://tfsbranchingguideiii.codeplex.com/   Background – I keep getting this question: I have a quick question for you on branching in Scrum and feature management.  My client is using Scrum and if we look at the branching structure...

This article presents a perspective on Source Control Management (SCM) using Team Foundation Server (TFS) with Scrum projects. Although I start with a short overview of Scrum to lay the foundation for the concepts, the essence of this article is to present TFS Branching Concepts for Scrum projects, large...

I recently received a question from a customer who is dealing with the need to support multiple feature teams working on multiple releases in development. They asked how to structure branching to support this environment. Background: My company is, for all practical purposes, a dot com. We have a single...

I was recently asked a question based on the following presentation from Google: How Google Speeds Up The Chrome Release Cycle (Slideshow) The main part of the article that interests me is the following: "Anthony LaForge, the technical program manager at Google overseeing Chrome development, created...

After a few years hiatus, i am returning to the world of *published author*. My next article will be published in the February 2011 issue of MSDN Magazine ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/default.aspx ) The topic will be *Visual Studio ALM Rangers Branching Guidance for Team Foundation Server...

Question from Customer: In the single team branch, once a release is done and if a bug is reported are we supposed to fix the bug in the Main branch and forward integrate back to the DEV branch Response: Separating Development from Release, bug fixing a shipped release is a Release question, not a question...

Question from customer: “I am very new to this branching  concept and try to understand.  I am not able understand the difference between the Single release vs. single team branching. Can someone help in knowing the difference.” Response: I like to think of branching for development separately...

One of my customers upgraded a Team Project from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010. As you probably know, the concept of first-class branches was introduced for the first time in TFS 2010. Along with this, there is a new restriction against having nested branches in TFS 2010. During the upgrade process, TFS attempts...

In October, the VS ALM Rangers posted the Branching Guidance - German version   thanks to Boris Wehrle , Thorsten Dralle , and Sven Hubert .

  In answer to the following question: “Are you advising that we wait until the build on Main is stable and all dependent systems are ready before we attempt to deploy anything?  This makes a hard-to-hit-target nearly impossible to hit (we have multiple teams, so it is already complex as it...

  Recently I was asked a question: “If you discourage changeset-based (or cherry-picking) merging, then why does TFS support it?  To me it feels like TFS is not fully supporting it because the merge engine isn't robust enough yet to support it, yet they know the feature is important. ...

In October, the VS ALM Rangers posted the Branching Guidance - Spanish version   thanks to Francisco Fagas , a VS ALM MVP. Francisco also translated the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance – Spanish version ).