#TFS – RIP Branching Guidance for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team Services

Hi !

I’ve been writing and talking about branches and branching strategies for a long time. I remember that I usually start or end my presentations with

The worst branching strategy is not to have a branching strategy at all

After some time, I get to a point where I realize that people are “over using” branches, so I start to try to teach about the correct use of branches (or event not use branches at all!). Then Git get into our lives and everything start to make more sense.

During all this time, there was a #MustRead document, which I strongly suggest if we talk about branches:

The Visual Studio ALM Rangers Branching Guidance,

This set of documents also included topics on dependency management with Nuget, Git for TFSVC users and more. It was a great starting point to have a clear view of what we can do with branches in Team Foundation Server or Visual Studio Team Services.

Now, after 10 years, this guide is removed from Codeplex, and the main idea is to replace this guide with MSDN articles as a starting point.

I’ll copy the contents proposed in the Visual Studio ALM Rangers post as new starting point for this.

Articles:

• Branching strategies with TFVC
• Map TFVC actions to Git
• Move Git repositories between team projects
• OMG, I just checked in a huge binary. Now what?

Blog posts:

• Alternative Branching Strategies
• Version Control Guidance – Frequently Asked Questions
• Walkthrough (Branching Strategies)
  • Part 1 – MAIN Only and Simplicity Rules
  • Part 2 – Development Isolation
  • Part 3 – Feature Isolation
  • Part 4 – Release Isolation … audit alarm
  • Part 5 – Servicing & Release Isolation
• Walkthrough (TFVC)
  • Part 1 – Create a new local workspace
  • Part 2 – Use the local workspace in online mode
  • Part 3 – Use the local workspace in offline mode
  • Part 4 – Explore the diff and merge tools
• Git for the TFVC User – Workflows
  • Part 1: Making Changes
  • Part 2: Reviewing Changes (No Conflicts)
  • Part 3: Reviewing Changes (With Conflicts)
  • Part 4: Converting a TFVC repository

Posters

• Git  and TFVC Overview
• Git vs TFVC Considerations
• Git Workflow

So, thanks to all the work of the ALM Rangers and RIP Branching Guidance!

Greetings @ Toronto

El Bruno

References

• Source, Visual Studio ALM Rangers The new Branching Guidance for Team Foundation Server, Team Services, and others
• El Bruno, Nueva version la guía de Merge y Branching en CodePlex
• El Bruno, Why not use branches or not do something not useful in your app devs