Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

Summary of Steps
• Step 1 – Evaluate Whether a Baseless Merge Is Needed
• Step 2 – Perform a Baseless Merge Using Tf.exe
• Step 3 – Resolve Merge Conflicts
• Step 4 – Check-In the Merged Changes
Step 1 – Evaluate Whether a Baseless Merge Is Needed
In this step, you evaluate the branches and items to be merged to determine if you need to
do a baseless merge or whether a regular merge will work.
If you are the owner/administrator of your team project, you will know the relationships
between the branches or items. From Visual Studio, you can only merge the branches or
items that have a parent-child relationship. If your project contains branches or items that
do not have this relationship, you require to perform baseless merge.
If you are not aware of all the relationships between the branches or items, you can
evaluate whether you need to use a baseless merge as follows.
1. Open Source Code Explorer.
2. Right-click the branched folder and then click Merge.
3. In the Source Control Merge Wizard dialog box, click the Target branch dropdown
list.
If you do not see an entry for the branch you want to merge, this indicates that no
merge relationship exists between these branches. In this case you must perform a
baseless merge.
Step 2 – Perform a Baseless Merge Using Tf.exe
In this step, you use the TFS command line tool Tf.exe to perform a baseless merge.
To perform a baseless merge:
1. Set the Workspace for both branches by performing a “Get Latest” operation on the
branches to be merged:
a. Open Source Code Explorer.
b. Right-click the folder for the first branch to be merged, and click Get Latest
Version.
c. Repeat the previous step for the second branch to be merged.
Note that if no workspace is mapped, Visual Studio prompts you to select a folder on
your local drive.
2) Open a Visual Studio command window.
3) Run the following Tf.exe command from the command line:
Tf merge /baseless /recursive