Files listed as pending changes when doing merges that didn't change?

Question

We\'ve had this happen more than a few times were we consider it to be more than a fluke at this point. When we are merging back after we are complete with our branch there

Answer 1

The comment above with the "No to all" option in the undo confirmation dialog works okay, but as commented by Mark Hosang, this will not work right if you have new files. Mladen Mihajlovic is right that you can make sure to not select those new files. However with a large code base, wading through this is very tedious.

So my method: before getting to the confirmation dialog, you are presented with a window to select which files to undo. This window has sortable columns. You can sort by the Change column and select only the files with merge status (these are the unchanged files; merge, edit are edited files and merge, branch are new files). Just click Undo Changes with just those selected, and then enjoy the beauty of an uncluttered merge changeset.

Answer 2

From my experience this happens when TFS has no relationship between file A in branch A and file B in branch B.

When merging branches TFS always creates a relationship between the files when no relationship is present already. Hence it wants to check in as "merge" to remember these relationships.

I tend to undo these "merge" changes when i don't need the relationships (e.g. for reparenting).

Answer 3

Regarding the problem where you had changed 100 files and TFS wanted to merge several thousand. This is usually caused by renaming (or deleting and then un-deleting, or moving) a branch. This has bitten me a couple of times and I feel your pain.

The best advise I can give is, once you've created a branch, leave it alone. Don't move it, don't rename it. If the location or name of the branch are wrong, live with it until it's time to delete the branch and create a new one.

Because of the way TFS 201x work behind the scenes, changing the root folder of a branch effectively turns it in to a different object. When you try to merge the branch again, TFS will perform a baseless merge which effectively means that it appears that all files in the branch have changed (even though they haven't) This is new behaviour, older versions of TFS (2005 / 2008) don't suffer from this problem.

e.g. you have a Team Project that looks like this

$/TeamProject/Main

You then create a branch from "Main" called "Dev"

$/TeamProject/Dev

You can merge as much as you like and there shouldn't be any problems. Then you decide that the folder structure might get a bit messy when you have several dev branches so you create a folder called "Development" at the root of the team project and move the dev branch in to this folder

$/TeamProject/Development/Dev

OK now behind the scenes the move is a rename and a delete, the old dev branch still exists under $/TeamProject/Dev (you can see this by going to "tools", "options", "Source Control", "Team Foundation Server" and then check the setting that says "show deleted items in Source Control"

The folder called $/TeamProject/Development/Dev is actually a brand new thing! Therefore it doesn't have a merge relationship with "Main". Confusingly though the IDE will show a relationship, but really it doesn't exist. The first time you merge from $/TeamProject/Development/Devto $/TeamProject/Main TFS will perform a sneaky baseless merge to establish the branching relationship.

The same thing happens if you rename a branch (the old branch will be deleted and a new branch will be created under the covers)

This Blog goes in to some more detail

Answer 4

Try this:

1. select all pending files
2. on context menu click 'Undo...'
3. in the 'Undo Pending Changes' dialog sort files by 'Change' column
4. deselect all files except 'merge' using shift+click
5. click button 'Undo Changes'

Answer 5

For anyone having the same issue a work around is to undo your pending changes. When you get the confirmation dialog choose "No to all". Only your pending changes should be left.