When you click Resolve on an individual conflict, what does the summary message say? If your merges from Current -> Experimental were completed without major manual work, it should be something like "X source, 0 target, Y both, 0 conflicting." In other words, there are no content blocks in the target (Current) file that aren't already in the source branch's copy (Experimental). You can safely use the AutoMerge All button.
Note: AutoMerge should be safe regardless. It's optimized to be conservative about early warnings, not for the ability to solve every case. But I recognize that many of us -- myself included -- like to fire up the merge tool when there's any question. In the scenario described, IMO, even the most skittish can rest easy.
Why is there a conflict at all? And what if the summary message isn't so cut & dry? Glad you asked :) Short answer - because the calculation that determines the common ancestor ("base") of related files depends heavily on how prior merge conflicts between them were resolved. Simple example:
- set up two branches, A and B.
- make edits to A\foo.cs and B\foo.cs in separate parts of the file
- merge A -> B
- AutoMerge the conflict
- merge B -> A
TFS must flag this sequence of events as conflicting. The closest common ancestor between B\foo.cs;4 and A\foo.cs;2 lies all the way back at step 1, and both sides have obviously changed since then.
It's tempting to say that A & B are in sync after step 4. (More precisely: that the common ancestor for step 5's merge is version #2). Surely a successful content merge implies that B\foo.cs contains all the changes made to date? Unfortunately there are a number of reasons you cannot assume this:
Generality: not all conflicts can be AutoMerged. You need criteria that apply to both scenarios.
Correctness: even when AutoMerge succeeds, it d
answered 2009-09-18T08:17:06.883