Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

• Merge scenarios – If you are undoing the check-in of a file that has very recently
been checked in, you probably will not need to merge changes because it is unlikely
that anyone else will have updated the item in the intervening period. However, if you
want to undo a check-in, and the check-in to be undone is not the latest change to a
file, a three-way merge is required. The current version on the server, the version you
have in your workspace, and the version you want to roll back to must be merged
together. If there are no conflicts, the changes from the version to be rolled back are
extracted from the file, and any changes that came after that version are preserved.
• Resolving conflicts – If you do need to perform a merge, the merge window is
displayed. To resolve the merge, select the item and then click Merge. An automatic
merge is initially attempted; if it fails, the merge tool is invoked to resolve the merge.
The Auto-Merge All button attempts to automatically merge each of the items in the
merge list, but does not attempt to invoke the merge tool.
Additional Resources
• To download the TFPT tool from MSDN, go to
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7324C3DB-658D-
441B-8522-689C557D0A79&displaylang=en
• To learn more about the TFPT, see “Power Toy: tfptexe” at
http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2005/11/16/493401.aspx
How to Resolve a Conflict
To resolve merge conflicts, use the Visual Studio merge tool. If a conflict is detected
during a merge, you can resolve conflicts either automatically or manually. If you choose
to resolve the conflict manually, you can keep the source changes, keep the target
changes, or resolve the conflict in the merge tool.
You might need to resolve conflicts when merging changes between branches, getting
files into your workspace, or checking in new versions of files. There are three conflict
types:
• Version – The file has evolved along divergent paths. This could be the result of a
file edit, rename, delete, or undelete operation.
• File Name Collision – Two or more items are trying to occupy the same path.
• Local Overwrite – Only occurs during a get operation, if you are trying to
overwrite a local, editable file.
Most conflicts can be resolved automatically; version conflicts are the only conflict type
that might result in a manual merge operation. Manual merge is most common in the
following scenarios:
• A file has been edited in both branches, with changes to the same lines of code.
• A baseless merge is being conducted in which the branch file relationships are not
known to TFS.
The merge tool shows you the details for each conflict and allows you to choose which
change you want to keep in the final merged file. You can choose to keep the source