TFS 2010 Merge after renaming a root branch

Question

My source code branch contains almost 20,000 files. I created a couple a couple of months ago called "v2.5TEMP", which was separated from the "Main" trunk. Developers worked in both branches.

Then I renamed "v2.5TEMP" to just "v2.5". People are working on this version, which is now released. I try to merge with v2.5 in the "Main" trunk and see every single file that is marked as requiring a merge.

After looking at the checks over the past few months, code changes have occurred, but not every file should be merged. It seems that renaming the branch marked each file as changed and now requires merging with "v2.5" in "Main".

I don’t want to check every file (20000) or perform every check in the history and decide what it takes to merge.

Answer 1

Yes, this is what happens when you rename a branch to TFS.

Renaming the root folder effectively leads to renaming for each file in this branch - and, therefore, to a conflict for each file when it eventually merges.

@ZephanSchroeder's answer to this question explains things in more detail.

Please note that using Auto Merge will work fine, so you do not need to strictly study each conflict. But this is still a big pain in merging, because you cannot see what has actually changed.

Our team was told not to rename the branches, because it is not worth the confusion that it causes later!