Is there any way to find out the original set of changes from which a particular branch was created in TFS?

Question

My business is as follows. My team uses TFS 2012 for version control. My teammate created a branch from a specific set of changes (and not the last for this moment) of another branch. I need to find out from which exact changes the branch was created, and which branch was used.

I tried to find it in the "View History" version control explorer in VS. Compared to svn, there is a property in the branch creation revision, which stores the initial revision and the initial location from which the branch was created. In TFS, kit part data looks like it does not contain such information.

Answer 1

Yes there is. discens is right, you can use Track Changeset functionality. By the way, a similar question has already been answered by SO, here it is . The answer contains a link to a blogpost that contains many details, including an API and a custom command line tool.

However, the path is not so obvious. To clarify this, here's a quick step-by-step guide on how to achieve results in Source Control Explorer :

• Find the child branch in Source Control Explorer
• Right-click on it to get the context menu, select View History .
• Find the first set of branch changes in the history viewer, right-click it to get the context menu, select Track Changeset .
• You will see the scheme of branches and the structure of their inheritance. In this step, you will recognize the parent .
• There is a check box next to each detected branch, but the parent from your child is usually not set. Check this out first. The child branch needs to be checked unconditionally, so the two flags that you need to select are the parent and the child.
• Remember to find the child branch in the Path filter input field using the Browse... button.
• Click the Visualize button at the bottom. You will see an image with rectangles representing these two branches. The rectangle of the parent branch should include a sorted list of change sets in this branch. The list can be huge, but the original set of changes (from which your child was created) should be the last.
• ???? PROFIT !!!!

You can see an example screenshot of the last steps in the blogpost .

Answer 2

You can use the Track Changeset function, which, I believe, will show you the history of the branch and what changes it contains.

You can access this function from Source Control Explorer