TFS 2017 : Restructure Source Control Tree Without Baseless Merges? - tfs

Question

Right now our Source Control tree looks something like this:
Team Project DB
|
|___ Hello World DB STABLE
|
|___ Hello World DB RELEASE
|
Team Project Framework
|
|___ Hello World Libs STABLE
|
|___ Hello World Libs RELEASE
|
Team Project Windows
|
|___ Hello World Windows STABLE
|
|___ Hello World Windows RELEASE
|
Team Project Web
|
|___ Hello World Website STABLE
|
|___ Hello World Website RELEASE
I would like to restructure it to this:
Team Project Hello World
|
|_____ STABLE
| |
| |____ Hello World DB
| |
| |____ Hello World Framework
| |
| |____ Hello World Windows Client
| |
| |____ Hello World Website
|
|
|_____ RELEASE
|
|____ Hello World DB
|
|____ Hello World Framework
|
|____ Hello World Windows Client
|
|____ Hello World Website
This is a very small example of a much larger (and thoroughly mangled) Source Control tree. All our branches/folders are in different stages of development. So things will need to be merged UP/DOWN at some point after the code has been restructured.
I've tried moving branches and folders around (obviously testing in a DEV environment) and it seems no matter what I do I always have to perform a baseless merge once I have the code organized. Does anyone know a way to do this in TFVC that will eliminate the need for baseless merges after the code has been moved?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

No, it's impossible. What you would like to do is branching/copying/moving folder/file among different projects and create a new structure.
In TFS, you could only merge to directly related branches(parent or child). There is no merge relationship between branch STABLE and RELEASE in your case.
You have to pefer a baseless merge, such as use tf merge command.
tf merge /baseless <<source path>> <<target path>> /recursive
/baseless
Performs a merge without a base version. That is, allows the user to
merge files and folders that do not have a merge relationship. After a
baseless merge, a merge relationship exists, and future merges do not
have to be baseless.
Note Baseless merges cannot delete files in the target. You can manually carry over such changes.