I have the following scenario:
A user shelves some changes. Time goes by and a new branch of the product is created. Later, it is determined that the shelveset contains code, that we will need in the new branch.
By default; Visual Studio can only restore the shelveset changes to the location where they were shelved from. Is it possible to restore my shelveset in the new branch ? I do not want the code to be checked into the original branch, as it would break stuff.
It appears it cannot. Shelves are very limited.
Worse. When you have newer versions of files in your working copy than the ones shelve is based on, unshelve reverts to the older version instead of doing merge. And it's dumb as it reverts only files changed in shelve, not all branch. You need to remember to Get latest version before doing any work with unshelved code.
I think you'll have to move your changes manually. You can help yourself using some diff/patch tools.
At first I thought shelves were a neat feature. Now I think they are almost useless. Better and cheaper support for branching would eliminate any need for them.
I only use them to backup my current working copy when:
In all other situation I use real development branches. You can use TFS's merge and baseless merge features with them. Still slow and pain in the a** but much better then manual moving changes with WinMerge, kdiff or whatever you use. They keep real history and let others really cooperate with you. And you can (with some effort) keep them in sync with mainstream development.
It is possible with the TFS Power Tools.
See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/117337/can-i-unshelve-to-a-different-branch-in-tfs-2008
Note the "migrate" option.