TFS merging and diff between branches

1
votes

I am implementing a TFS branching structure where there is a MAIN integration branch, a Production branch which contains code released to production, and a Development branch. Both Dev and Prod are branched off Main.

Any concurrent development will be done on sub-branches which will be branched off the Development branch and I would like any changes made to the regular Development branch to merge back to the sub branches as required. I can't see any way to automate merges but one thing I thought of was having a nightly or weekly diff process that looks at the two branches and sends an email report of differences between say the Development branch and each Sub Branch.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this and if there are any products I could use to do the auto-diff and report emailing?

Thanks

1
tfsdiffbranching-and-merging
It sounds like you are trying to use way too many branches, and then create an automated process to put them all back together. If the integration process could be automated, why the different branches in the first place? Maybe you should take a step back and ask yourself, "what problem are these branches supposed to solve?" - Andrew Clear
Well the branches are only for when concurrent development on the same code is being done, mostly I expect developers to develop on the main DEV branch. But I suppose rather than auto merging, what I'd like is for when changes are made to DEV, for anyone working on a branch to be notified that there are new changes to Forward Integrate into their branch, which they will need to integrate before they come back to the main DEV branch. And if they can be made aware of it, they can choose to integrate early to spot potential problems, rather than wait until months down the track. - NZJames

1 Answers

1
votes

This would depend on the expected stability of the DEV branch. However, a rather straightforward solution is a CI build on the DEV branch that sends a notification email when it succeeds to the people who need to forward integrate from it.

This however, seems a bit of a hack to me as in all likelihood this CI build is going to be triggered at least once a day. Which means that the email notification will become spam. Why not just have the first thing developers do when they start for the day be forward integrate from the parent branch? This keeps the merges small, so resolving the conflicts should be fairly straightforward.

If two branches are constantly merging, you probably don't need the child branch.

Anyways, a CI build with a email notification on success will get you what you've asked for. Every time the branch changes, everyone is notified.