Question

Say I have a c# web application project in a TFS Team Solution that I am deploying to a development server (IIS7). I want to be able to promote only certain code changes to a test server, and then later promote ONLY those changes to the production server.

So for example changes to a web user control and a javascript file should be promoted, but a change to a web form should not be promoted.

Using the deployment feature in Visual Studio seems to be an all-or-nothing proposition.

Short of manually selecting files to copy/paste, or write some kind of app that compares files in a target and source directory, list files that are different, and lets you select source files to promote, what do teams usually do in this situation?

In short: how can I reliably promote select files/code from environment to environment without also including other changes that should not be promoted?

Answer 1

Create two branches in TFS, one for development and one for production.
Merge dev->production only changes that you need.
Create deployment packages from production branch.