The new Branching Guidance for Team Foundation Server, Team Services, and others

We released the first version of the branching guidance 10 years ago and the second in 2010 on CodePlex, with over a quarter of a million downloads to date.

To align the guidance with the product documentation and improve discoverability, we retired the CodePlex project (v2) and moved the mainstream guidance to Articles about DevOps and Visual Studio ALM, experimental guidance and walkthroughs to our team blog.

Bookmark solutions and publications for all our latest solutions. Here’s an extract for the branching guidance:

• 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?

• 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

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

What do you think of the new crisp and practical guidance? We need your feedback!

Here are some ways to connect with us:

• Add a comment below
• Send us a tweet @almrangers

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2016
  I would like to see guidance around the Release Management tooling, and how to properly handle releases and bug fixes.
• Anonymous
  May 15, 2018
  The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    May 15, 2018
    TymTam, the articles have just been refreshed and are relevant. The rest of the material is dated (2+ years old), but still relevant.
    • Anonymous
      April 22, 2019
      Hey buddy! :) Just getting an update. Did you guys change many of the points I worked on?