Any good recommendation/resource for doing Branching in TFS (Team Foundation Server)?

Question

Branching always seems to be a complicated thing to do. Not technically but yeah there are some real decisions/planning that goes in to come up with an appropriate branching strategy.

I know of this TFS Branching Guide

Any other resource or guideline which you recommend or use for branching and merge.

Sharing your experience in this area is really appreciated.

Answer 1

If you only concentrate on resources that specifically reference TFS then you'll miss a huge amount of excellent content that is more general in nature or is even aimed at other source control systems. Given that you seem to be more interested in methodology rather than the technical implementation of TFS branching, it makes sense to look elsewhere - for example:

• You can find a good general source control tutorial here, which is written by Eric from SourceGear
• Jeff Atwood (one of the SO founders) talked about branching strategies in his Coding Horror blog
• SVN has an excellent - if slightly verbose - section on branching in its documentation

Answer 2

I've read the patterns and practices branching document and have now started reading the Team Foundation Server 2008 in Action from Manning.

I haven't got as far as the branching\merging strategy section yet in this publication but what I've read so far (related to the new build features in TFS 2008) have been pretty good!

Answer 3

I think this a pretty refreshing view also infoq

Answer 4

Read this: http://oreilly.com/catalog/practicalperforce/chapter/ch07.pdf Also, as a general rule, Microsoft's stuff is overcomplicated and difficult to use. Try something open source first.