Orphaned Branches in TFS

Question

We have a trunk in TFS that everyone works off until we have a need to branch. Our last project was a large feature that required a branch. Now that the development has been completed and the changes have been merged back into the trunk. What should happen to the development branch?

Should I delete it? Mark it as read-only somehow? What about cloaking and locking?

Answer 1

You can make a branch read-only. You just need to remove the check-in/check-out permissions from the appropriate groups. Note that it doesn't look any different on first blush, but when you attempt to check out a file, you'll be prevented.

I always end up deleting the branch. It's "deleted" but there's nothing preventing you from undeleting it (which is different that destroying) or looking back at the code. It doesn't actually go anywhere unless you go through the effort of destroying it.

In addition, if you have a nice tool like Team Foundation Sidekicks, you can still see all of the branching history, even if it's been deleted.

You can, as @Ray says, just leave it, but if you do that over the course of a dozen or so branches, things become a bit unwieldy to manage. If the branch is dead, and you've merged the code into mainline, do you have any purpose for keeping it around aside from "just-in-case."

If so, just delete it and dig back through it only if you really have to.

Answer 2

Just leave it. :) You can delete the branch but it will still remain in the repository. It really is a decision that you and your team can make to follow your source control guidelines.

On a side note, there is no read-only option in TFS, you can only leave it, delete it or run the TFS destroy command to permanently remove the branch.