Wednesday 7 November 2007

Labelling VS Branching in TFS - Source Control Best Practices

TFS provides both branching and labelling. The question is: when should I use branching and when should I use labelling?.
As a general rule:

If you just want to mark a set of code as a milestone, then label. Otherwise use branching - you never know when you will need to patch your code!

See http://blogs.msdn.com/team_foundation/archive/2005/02/23/379179.aspx
for a more detailed explanation. Buck Hodges says:


"For anything that you don't want to service or patch, labeling is sufficient. For a release that you do want to service or patch, branching is the way to go. By having a separate branch, you'll have a place to check in your changes and maintain the code while continuing development on the main branch. Using merge, you can move changes between branches."

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