We are using Team Foundation Server 2010 at work and all of our assignments come from TFS tasks.
Right now I have 2 tasks that relate to the same source file. They are two separate feature requests, but I will end up writing common methods for both. I check in the code changes and link the task when I am finished with the task.
There’s an issue right now though with the test database that is prohibiting me from actually finishing off on the first task and checking it in. Well the next task is on the same file.
I am curious how other people handle this issue. I know I could shelve the change and work on the other, but I kind of need some of the other methods I wrote in the first task. The body in some of these methods will be changing a little bit to handle the next feature.
Do I shelve my changes, copy my methods over and modify them for the new task? If I do that, how would the merge process work when I un-shelve my changes? How do any of you handle this issue? Am I better off just doing both tasks in the same changeset? However, now the 2nd task has a dependency on the 1st. If for some reason the database doesn’t get fixed, that first task is now holding up the 2nd task from being deployed.
Thanks for your input in advance.
If both tasks are destined for the same release, work on them in the same branch, and just associate both task workitems with the checkin. If they are fundamentally separate changes, and my move to the production codebase separately, then you should have two separate branches for the code.