TFS 2010 Branch Across Team Projects - Best Practices

I'm having issues understanding how to configure TFS according to best practices as provided by the TFS Ranger team. The issue is such:

My company has several products which make use of a shared common code base.

> $/Core
>  -> /Main/Source (Parent Branch)
> 
> $/Product1
>  -> /Main/Source
>  -> /Main/Source/Core/Source (Child Branch from $/Core)
>  -> /Main/Source/...
> 
> $/Product2
>  -> /Main/Source
>  -> /Main/Source/Core/Source (Child Branch from $/Core)
>  -> /Main/Source/...

Therefore we have one team collection and say, three team projects for this example. ($/* is a team project)

Our initial release branching is a bit of a pain. Instead of branching on the /Main to /Releases, or /Main to /Development, we have been branching each project individually. (Not team project ... solution project.)

This is due to the inability to have nested branch roots. (See TFS Errors: TF203028 and TF203071)

According to TFS Ranger Guide and our revised approach to branching releases, hotfixes, developments, we should branch from /Main rather than /Main/Source/Proj1,/Proj2,/Proj3, etc. It's just become a rather large annoyance.

Ideally we would like:

> $/Product1
> -> /Main/ (Branch - Parent)
> -> /Releases
>    -> /1.x
>       /1 Service Pack (Child Branch from $/Product1/Main
>       -> /1.0
>          -> /1.0 Hotfix (Child Branch from $/Product1/Releases/1.x/1 Service Pack)
>          -> /1.0 RTM (Child Branch from $/Product1/Releases/1.x/1.0/1.0 Hotfix - Read Only)
>          -> /1.0.22 RTM (Child Branch from $/Product1/Releases/1.x/1.0/1.0 Hotfix - Read Only)
>       -> /1.5
>          -> /1.5 Hotfix (Child Branch from $/Product1/Releases/1.x/1 Service Pack)
>          ->


                    
                    
                        
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TFS 2010 Branching Revisited:

I would like to offer a mode of confidence for the TFS 2010 baseless merge feature as a way to resolve this issue. I highly recommend picking up the Wrox book "Professional Team Foundation Server 2010".

In it, it describes this problem in depth and whilst it doesn't advocate the use of baseless merges, it sheds light on how to use them in scenarios like this.

We have been using them since this question was first resolved back in April and have yet to encounter a situation where the baseless merge present a problem. I wanted to post an image detailing our branching setup as recommended by the book and the ALM Ranger Team.

enter image description here

answered 2011-06-22T18:45:18.667

TFS 2010 Branch Across Team Projects - Best Practices

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