What's the best way to deal with dead branches in TFS?

Question

In TFS, what is the best way to mark dead branches? Do you move your branch? Branch release it? Delete it? Rename it? What problems have you run into for each of these approaches? What are the good points?

It would be nice if there were a simple interface solution that would simply mark or filter the current view if a particular branch was tagged as dead. That way you wouldn't have to do something permanent like rename or delete a branch . . .

Answer 1

Deletion isn't permanent, so I'd go with this option.

You can then opt whether or not to view deleted items in SCE (Tools -> Options -> Source Control -> Visual Studio Team Foundation Server -> Show deleted items in the Source Control Explorer).

And you can choose to undelete the branches if necessary.

Answer 2

After merging back to the trunk we do delete them much easier than having to cloak them in workspaces, see Ian's about deletes not being permanent.

Answer 3

We move our dead branches to an archive area of the project.

• Because the branches are cheap in TFS, there is not a space concern.
• Deletion can cause bizarre problems when someone attempts to add something new with the same name.
• Moving them enables continued use of features like Annotate (a.k.a. blame), which allows drilling through branches to see a full history of changes.