[# TFS11] Baseless Merge now from the IDE

Hi,

one of the most common cases that you find when you work with Branches, is the need for a MERGE between the two branches that are not interrelated. In Team Foundation Server is known as Baseless Merge and it is possible to do from the command line but not from the IDE.

Now with Visual Studio 11, in the Merge options, we have a new feature that allows us to perform Baseless Merge in a more natural way.

For example, suppose the following structure of branches:

In the same if I try to perform a MERGE of the contents of DEV towards other branches, I will see that the only possible option is to work with the MAIN branch (which is the father of the same)

Well, if we click on the [Browse] button we see that we have the ability to select a Branch regardless of the relationship you have with the branch of origin.

Once selected a branch not related, we will see a warning about the action of type Baseless Merge.

Once the MERGE TEST-ASIA branch, we can see in the history of a ChangeSet this type of MERGE with a type of special line.In the following image it is possible to see the line continues to MERGE and line in points for BASELESS MERGE.

However, the ability to perform a BASELESS MERGE is not available in the actions of drag & drop us in the viewer elements.But nevertheless it remains a very useful option to work with branches avoiding the command prompt.