Does TFS lose its link when you move a branch?

Question

My co-worker is trying to merge his development branch back into the baseline. Even though he only modified a couple files, all files in the baseline are being checked out for merging. As if it's a baseless merge. What gives?

I don't experience this and the only difference I can see is that I branched directly from the baseline and he made a branch and then did a "move" on the branch. Does moving a branch mess up the link back to the baseline? He is still able to select the baseline in the GUI so I don't think it's doing a baseless merge since that's only available via command line, but it's behaving like that.

Anyone got some insight or know what else we should check?

Answer 1

This is by design. TFS needs to mark the changeset where you moved the source branch as "already accounted for" so it's no longer a candidate next time you merge.

Merge history is recorded at Checkin time by updating all of the pending changes that have their Merge bit set. Ordinarily, this is accompanied by other change types like Edit, Delete, etc. If not, it's just a recordkeeping transaction like the case you've encountered. (there are other cases) No files will be modified by checking in the "no-op" merges.