There are several/many questions regarding TFS branching strategy, but I am haven't been able to come up with a strategy that fits with my scenario. My TFS project consists of a single solution that contains a Web Project, a Business Layer Project, and a Data Layer Project. The project is a portal of reports. Reports are largely isolated in subfolders within the project. There are however some features across the entire project such as session management. Over a given period of time, the workflow may occur as follows:
Stable snapshot of code.
Development of Report A begins.
Development of Report B begins.
The project with the inclusion of Report A needs to be pushed to our qa environment.
The project with the inclusion of Report A and Report B needs to be pushed to our qa environment.
The project with only the inclusion of Report B needs to be pushed to our prod environment.
So basically, each report is on a completely independent timetable. I need to be able to independently publish a branch of code to our different environments. Currently, we don't have branching - we just don't add a link to a new feature if the project gets published when a report isn't ready but is included in the project. Not the best scenario.
My initial go at a branching strategy was to have Main sit between the QA and prod environments, basically as just a container to merge before branching to a production branch for a production publish. Each report would be developed on a branch from main. For both our test and qa environments, a branch from main would be created and the appropriate development branch(es) would be merged into this "proposed updates" branch. This doesn't work though because I am merging development/feature branches into a branch that isn't the parent branch. I can't have Main at this level because a Report may be in development for weeks while another may be on a timetable that has it developed and pushed through the process to production in only a few days. My "proposed update" branches for test and qa need to be able to be independently created from a merging of only the appropriate dev branch(es).
My only experience with branching/merging is a main+dev pair of branches, so I'm very out of my element here. How can I setup my branching in such a way that I am able to merge features in on independent timetables without getting stuck and code being published to an environment before it is ready?
If it matters, we are on TFS 2008 right now and hope to go to TFS 2010 soon. This is an immediate need to get going on our current TFS 2008 server though.
I'm not exactly clear on everything; reading comprehension and all.
As I understand it, your current process is Dev -> Test -> QA -> Production. Devs work on code, push it to an environment where they can test on it. Once satisfied, they push it to QA, and when code passes it moves into production.
In addition, you have several "teams" (1 or more devs) that must work on separate reports, each of which must eventually be moved through the above process into Production. Teams may be working on code that is distinct from all others, or teams may find they cannot move their code forward until other teams reach stability.
If I were in charge of branching for this solution, I would recommend the following.
First, create a Production branch. This branch only contains production code. Only your QA team touches this branch.
Next, create a QA branch. This branch is also maintained solely by QA teams. They manually merge test code into this branch, run their quality assurance tests, then merge with Production. Every time they merge with Production, or test code is accepted into QA, a label is applied to the branch. If test code fails, the branch is reverted back to the prior label.
Development teams manage their own branches. They are created by branching from QA at the latest label. This assures they are working with the latest approved code. Developers work with and test on this branch. If teams have a dependency on each other, they should work on the same branch, unless it becomes clear that creating secondary branches from their shared Dev branch would be easier. Once a Dev branch meets the milestones set for the developers, QA should be informed that the branch is ready for merging with QA for testing.
Alternatively, depending on how complex development is, you might even consider uniting the QA and Production branches. Often, it is a simple matter to add a label to a branch to indicate a stable, production worthy build. It also keeps the branching strategy as simple as possible, which is always a good thing.
I think you should look at the Branching Guidance put together by the VS ALM Rangers.
http://tfsbranchingguideiii.codeplex.com/
This should alswer all of your questions. You are looking at quite an advanced branch plan. I also have some good practical guidance on my blog. I know that I am talking about Scrum teams, but it is basicaly Feature branching based on the Guidance.
http://blog.hinshelwood.com/archive/2010/04/14/guidance-a-branching-strategy-for-scrum-teams.aspx
If you get a chance please vote over
at the new "Visual Studio ALM"
StackExchange over in Area51 as we are
trying to setup a place dedicated to
answering these questions with the
Visual Studio ALM MVP's and Visual
Studio ALM Rangers on hand to answer
your questions.
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/15894/visual-studio-alm
[I know this question is old but this may help others that come across this question]
Most "branch per feature" teams use one "main" branch and break away from the branch per environment approach. Environment releases can be handled by clearly labeling each environmental release on the MAIN branch.
The QA release is the result of merging all features/issue branches considered fully tested and ready for QA into MAIN. As bugs are found, new bug branches are branched off of MAIN, which are fixed and merged back to MAIN. When all QA releases are deemed ready for production, a PROD build is made from MAIN. In short MAIN is the one source of truth for code.
If you need to work ahead, an integration-test branch (TEST) can be used to determine what features are "production ready," but feature/issue branches should be merged to MAIN on a case-by-case basis, rather than in bulk from the TEST branch.
Hotfixes can be branched from the PROD label, then fixed, tested and merged back to MAIN for a new PROD release.
I'm going to refer you to a great video on Branch per Feature. It focuses on GIT, but the strategies do not depend on GIT and can be used just as effectively on TFS SCC: https://youtu.be/9SZ7kSQ2424
Related
We are using visualstudio.com TFS to store the source code. We have DEV, STG and PROD branches. now I want to automate build and release to IIS server.
But it looks like to me that TFS compiles the code from the branch where I commit to, and that's the only build, after that I can install the same binary on all the servers.
But it doesn't seem to be ok, because what if we find a bug on the live code, so we need to fix it, but we already have new code in DEV, and we don't want to revert, and install the old code with the fix on the dev server?
What I think we should do is to merge the code from DEV to STG, from STG to PROD, but I couldn't find any module for that. And it looks strange, I would be surprised if I am the only person whats to do this, especially because it is doable with Jenkins.
thanks
I typically discourage automating merging of code between branches; merging should be a deliberate action. When someone expresses that desire, it's usually a sign of a problem with the branching model and deployment model they're using.
Code promotion branching (where you have one branch that corresponds to each environment, as in the scenario you described) is a bad practice because it encourages you to build different sets of binaries for each environment. You build something for a lower environment, test it, validate it, then totally disregard that testing and rebuild from source. That should terrify you, especially for production branches -- you have no idea if what you just built is going to work properly.
Current thinking is to minimize the number of branches you have, and instead isolate in-progress work behind feature toggles so that features that aren't ready for production can simply be disabled, but still allow deployments to take place. With sufficiently mature feature toggling practices and testing practices in place, you can actually eliminate branching entirely and work out of a single branch, promoting binaries to production whenever your automated and manual QA process deems the version they're testing is good.
Assuming you're using TFVC, if you want to maintain a code promotion branching strategy, then you'll need to maintain multiple builds and releases, one for each branch/environment. Typically, in this kind of scenario, I'd eliminate the stage branch entirely. Anything that goes to the Dev branch is built and deployed to Dev. Anything that goes into the Prod branch is built and follows a deployment pipeline from staging->production. Hotfixes can go directly into the prod branch and be merged backwards. There are tons of strategies for branching; you'll need to read up on the subject and design a branching and release strategy that works best for your team.
The Microsoft ALM Team describe the Basic Branch Plan as needing a MAIN, DEV, and RELEASE branch.
I am working on introducing branching/merging to a new team who currently uses source control with no branches whatsoever.
I was wondering how the RELEASE branch is actually used.
Can changes be made in the DEV branch then be merged up to the MAIN branch without needing a RELEASE branch? MAIN would still be read-only. It would basically be the RELEASE branch in essence. The reason I say this is because we don't have that many changes but I want to isolate the stable code from new changes. Our concept of a "release" per say is not yet well defined. I am still working on that.
I just don't know if my team needs a RELEASE branch (considering our needs specifically).
I would appreciate some comment about the strategy of just having a MAIN and DEV branch.
Typically the release branch(es) are used for "safekeeping". Basically the same as a label.
Releases to production are usually a pretty important event, and you want to know exactly what source you released (in case you ever need to go back to it). Way back when people used to create Labels to track this, but creating Release branches is better for a couple reasons:
Labels are mutable in TFS, meaning somebody could change a label and there would be no audit trail
Branches are also mutable of course (changes can be checked in), but this can be locked down via branch specific permissions
Also if a change is made to a Release branch (which it never should be), at least you have an audit trail through history
Even though a branch looks like a heavy-weight operation creating a copy of your entire code base, in reality TFS just creates a new pointer to the same files, so the storage cost is trivial
I went the other way when I implemented TFS at a client (replaced SVN). What I did was introduce a MAIN branch and a RELEASE branch and not a DEV branch initially as that seemed very confusing to the team. It is also hard to convey the purpose of a DEV branch to an SVN familiar team initially.
The main purpose of our RELEASE branch was to preserve a historical placeholder as said in another answer. Currently we are using Git and we have a CI server that does the release process and branches to release/$version_number. I think that concept might be easier to understand and convey to your team. i.e. automatically create release branches when you actually release.
I have a Team Project in TFS where tasks are submitted daily. I would like to work on each task independently and then merge it into the main line after testing.
Currently there is a MAIN branch and a DEV branch which is a child of MAIN. Changes are worked on in the DEV branch and then merged into MAIN when they are ready. This is done via a "cherry-pick" merge. I've been reading everywhere that cherry-pick merges are bad and you should avoid them whenever possible.
I am having trouble wrapping my head around branching and merging in TFS and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to achieve this goal in TFS without having to do cherry pick merges.
Any help is appreciated.
If I left out any key information please leave a comment and I will edit my post.
I think this Codeplex documentation will be a big help:
http://tfsbranchingguideiii.codeplex.com/
The download has several PDFs that outline different scenarios and strategies and give excellent Q&A on different approaches.
The key for your scenario would be to merge all changes up to a specified version from Dev to Main. Run all tests each time code is checked into Dev (and developers get the latest Dev code, then run all tests before checking in). Ideally, if the build in the Dev branch is successful after Dev checkin, merging into Main would be a good idea. Merge frequently from Dev to Main, and run all the tests in Main after each checkin.
So even though developers work individually on specific pieces, once they check into the Dev branch they are essentially saying "this code is ready to integrate." And when merging from Dev to Main, you no longer deal with specific pieces--you merge the whole enchilada. If Developers need source control for work-in-process code, they should use TFS shelvesets and wait to check into Dev until they are "done."
You might find Timpani Software's MergeMagician tool interesting. It is a branch management and automated merging solution that works with TFS (and also Subversion). You create publish/subscribe relationships between branches, and then the server automates the merges.
MM can be used to implement all of that patterns discussed in the TFS Branching Guide that Shawn mentioned.
FYI, it is a commercial tool. I don't know of any open source tools that do anything like this that work with TFS.
Check it out at http://www.timpanisoftware.com. There's a good overview video on the home page.
I am working with a small development shop that consists of a group of 5 developers and 1 QA person. We are using TFS and need to get more sophisticated on how we use this tool.
Currently the development team checks in their code each evening. A nightly build runs and pushes the output out on a network share. Our QA person uses this build for testing the next day. Sometimes the build off the trunk codebase has issues/bugs that hinder the QA process, and it hasn’t been a giant issue in the past, but we now want to get to a state where we have our QA person testing on a stable QA build.
So I believe we need to create a branch (call it QA), and the developers will continue to develop off the trunk, but the QA person will use builds created from code in the QA branch.
Seems simple enough, but we have started doing code reviews as well. So we have another desire in that only code that has been code reviewed can be promoted to the QA branch. Each developer works off a TFS item, and when they check in a changeset, they do it against a TFS item which creates a link between a checked in code file and a TFS item. Eventually the TFS item becomes complete and ready for code review. All code attached to the TFS item is reviewed. How can the versions of these files get promoted to the QA branch?
In the QA branch, if a bug is found, we want to fix it in the QA branch and have the changes migrated back to the trunk. I believe TFS has a way to automatically do this doesn’t it?
Long story short, we want to get to a build and CM environment that I believe is pretty standard, but we are unaware of how to make this happen with TFS. Given our situation above, can someone point out a book or website(s) that would address our specific needs? We would like to make this happen without having to get too deep in CM theory or TFS.
I very much appreciate any and all suggestions!
Thanks,
John
You might want to take a gander at the resources on CodePlex. There are different strategies laid out for how you might want to build your branching model.
We have 3 environments: dev, test, and staging.
I want to check in and out of TFS. When we make changes, I want to promote the code to the dev web server. Next I want to promote the changes to test, then to staging. Would it be possible to do this with Team Foundation Server?
Why on earth are people suggesting branching? You branch for different features or static branches for release snapshots.
Surely the differences between these environments are configuration items/files and settings within these. All you need to do is get your deployment and release management process in order.
Create appropriate MSBuild tasks and use TFSBuild (Continuous Integration) to call these to take care of outputting the correct config files for the Environment/Configuration you are building. You can trivially add another MSBuild target that deals with the appropriate deployment to the respective target environments.
You can manually checkout the code from each branch, make your changes subsequently to each branch, and checkin. Very carefully.
Much better is to have these 3 environments be branches of each other. (Typically you start with dev, and branch to the other 2 in turn). Then you can use the Merge functionality to merge (for example) your dev changesets directly to test, etc. At this point your Test modules (that need to be changed to match dev) are checked out, with the changes. Then simply commit the changes. Then repeat for staging and rinse. This is the suggested methodology for this common scenerio.
Two important notes:
Even though TFS if very server-centric (compared to SVN, for example), this merging functionality happens on the client. You need to have each branch mapped to your machine. After the Merge process is completed, you'll have uncommitted changes in the target branch until you check in.
In Microsoft's vision and in the example I give here, these branches are permanent. This was a change from my previous practice using SVN, where whole branches were created/promoted/retired all the time. In the TFS way, you create the Test branch and it remains, indefinately, the Test branch. It's never promoted; its changes are merged elsewhere.
Building is a separate action. You need to set up a separate build for each situation, though of course once you set up the first one the other two will be trivial. After your merge to staging, you'll then run the staging build. (From Team Explorer or in the Build menu). TFS is a bit heavy but once it is set up it does handle this situation very well, easy for a distributed team to merge and build quickly (with automated build tests, etc.).
Yes, this is possible, but you must manually check them in from one branch to another.