Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

Use the Main branch as a staging ground for integrating changes that have been checked
into the development branch. Perform all active development in the Development branch,
and integrate non-breaking changes into the Main branch.
Additional Resources
• For an introduction to branching and merging, see “Branching and Merging Primer”
at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730834(VS.80).aspx
• For more information about branching, see “How to: Branch Files and Folders” at
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181425(VS.80).aspx
• For more information about merging, see “How to: Merge Files and Folders” at
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181428(VS.80).aspx
• For additional descriptions of how to branch and merge in Visual Studio 2005, see
“Branching and Merging Team Foundation Source Control” at
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181423(VS.80).aspx
How to Use Branching to Stabilize Feature Development
Use Feature branches to improve the integration and stabilization of breaking changes
across features.
The following is an example of what your branch structure might look like after you have
created Feature branches:
• Development – Container for feature branches
o Feature A – Feature branch
• Source
o Feature B – Feature branch
• Source
o Feature C – Feature branch
• Source
• Main – Integration branch
o Source
o Other Asset Folders
Keep the following recommendations in mind when working with Feature branch:
• When to branch – Feature teams often have source file overlap, increasing the
potential for build breaks and check-in conflicts. If you are experiencing these
problems, consider feature branches for each feature to provide feature isolation.
You can create these off Main branch for small teams, or off a Team branches for
larger teams.
• When not to branch – If you are only creating CI builds, or your daily builds are
already predictably stable, you might not need the extra overhead of Feature
branches.
• Permissions in branch – Assign read/write permissions to developers on the
feature branch, and read-only permissions to everyone else.