Code and Asset Branching Best Practices

Session 315Philip Wolfe, Lead DeveloperFarm Credit Services of America

Lightning Round Agenda

• Introduction to Source Asset Management• Terms and Definitions• Initial Source Control Setup• Branching for Continuous Integration• Branching for Team Development• Branching to Support Release Activities• Wrap-up

Introduction to Source Asset Management

• As you work on your product, there are different versions of the product in use– Designers have the latest version– Quality Assurance has a stable version– Delivered projects are the “old” version

• Source asset management outlines a way to keep the different versions organized

Terms and Definitions

• Branch (noun) – a copy of the assets– Development (Dev) Branch – A “Work in progress”

version of the project– Main Branch – The most current, stable version of

the project– Release Branch – A copy of the project that

contains what was actually released• Branch (verb) – to make a copy of a folder and

the contents of that folder.

Terms and Definitions

• Merge (verb) – To overwrite the contents of a destination folder with the changes from the source folder– Merging from Dev to Main means to make Main

look Dev– Features vary by Source Control software

• Forward Integrate (FI) – Merge from parent to child

Terms and Definitions

• Reverse Integrate (RI) – Merge from child to parent

• Release Vehicle – How you deliver your product to your customer– Release to Manufacturing (RTM) – A major release

of your project– Service Pack – A release that all customers should

apply– Hotfix – A release that fixes specific defects for

customers affected by those defects (not everyone)

Initial Source Control Setup

Project Name

DEVELOPMENT

MAIN

RELEASE

Source

Source

Source

Initial Source Control Setup

M A I N

D E V E L O P M E N T

Merge

Merge

R E L E A S EM

erge

Mer

ge

Merge

Branching for Continuous Integration

M a i n

D e v e l o p m e n t

Merge

Merge

Merge

Merge

Merge

Merge

Merge

Merge

Branching for Team Development

M a i n

F e a t u r e Te a m 2

F e a t u r e Te a m 1

Merge

Mer

ge

Mer

ge

Merge

R e l e a s e 1

Branching to Support Release Activities

M a i n

R T M

S P 1

R T M

Mer

ge

Mer

geM

erge

D e v e l o p m e n t

Merge

Mer

ge

Mer

ge

Wrap-up

• Branching helps you have multiple running versions of the product at the same time

• Branching helps you support continuous integration

• Branching helps you manage releases• http://tfsbranchingguideii.codeplex.com/