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Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

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How do TFS labels differ from VSS labels?<br />

<strong>Team</strong> <strong>Foundation</strong> <strong>Server</strong> labels differ significantly from VSS labels. Because VSS labels<br />

are “point in time” labels that you normally assign to all or part of a tree in VSS, VSS<br />

displays labels according to time sequence along <strong>with</strong> the file history. Everything that<br />

appears on the list before the labeled file is included in the label, while everything later in<br />

the list is not.<br />

In TFS, instead of being a single point in time, labels tie together specific versions of a<br />

set of source files. A common scenario for labels is to use them to mark daily builds. This<br />

allows you to easily retrieve the source file set corresponding to a particular build; for<br />

example, if you need to apply a fix.<br />

Additional Resources<br />

• For more information about comparing TFS and VSS labels, see “Comparing<br />

SourceSafe Labels to <strong>Team</strong> <strong>Foundation</strong> <strong>Server</strong> Labels” at<br />

http://blogs.vertigosoftware.com/teamsystem/archive/2006/05/03/Comparing_Source<br />

Safe_Labels_to_<strong>Team</strong>_<strong>Foundation</strong>_<strong>Server</strong>_Labels.aspx<br />

What is branching?<br />

Branching (also known as forking) is the act of splitting a collection of files into separate<br />

development paths. <strong>Team</strong> <strong>Foundation</strong> <strong>Server</strong> supports branching and sophisticated<br />

merging that allows you to join together files from separate branches. For example, you<br />

can use branching to isolate major releases of your application. After you have branched<br />

the released version of your application, you can more easily maintain it in the future.<br />

Merging allows you to selectively make fixes to both branches.<br />

The purpose of branching and merging is to allow you to isolate concurrent streams of<br />

development. For instance, you create a branch when your team has produced a build that<br />

you want to maintain going forward. You could also choose to branch in order to isolate<br />

feature teams in a very large development organization, or to support development on<br />

multiple versions of your application at once.<br />

Because TFS Version Control does not make separate copies of the file content when you<br />

branch, it does not consume a lot of additional space in the source control database. A<br />

branch consists of a pointer in the database to the source content in the list of deltas that<br />

modify it from the base version.<br />

Additional Resources<br />

• For an introduction to branching and merging, see “Branching and Merging Primer”<br />

at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730834(VS.80).aspx<br />

• For more information about branching, see “How to: Branch Files and Folders” at<br />

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181425(VS.80).aspx<br />

• For more information about merging, see “How to: Merge Files and Folders” at<br />

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181428(VS.80).aspx

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