Question

When i create a branch from the mainline in TFS 2010 i have to download all of the code i have just branched.

I already have the latest mainline version on my laptop so why is TFS requiring me to effectively download whats already on my hard disk?

Even if i copy the mainline files into a folder and map the new branch to this folder it still performs a fully recursive get and chokes our bandwith for 30 minutes or so.

This seems like such a waste of time and bandwith – is their a workaround/procedure that i am not aware of?

Answer 1

For faster switching between branches, give the tf get /remap option a try. From Brian Harry’s blog:

This is a new
option on tf get that is intended to
be used when you want to switch your
workspace from one branch to another
in the same code base. You first
change the workspace mapping and then
issue a tf get /remap. Because a
large percentage of the files in two
related branches are frequently
identical, this command optimizes for
that. Rather than downloading all the
content, it will only download the
things that are different between the
two branches. I can reduce the get of
a very large workspace from 10’s of
minutes to a few seconds.

Note that this requires TFS 2008 SP1 or later.

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fx7sdeyf(VS.90).aspx