Require approval before checking-in code to a project (TFS)

Question

We have a particularly critical project in one of our solutions and would like any check-ins to that project to be approved by another member of the team. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Forcing a code review is not possible at the moment but you could switch to a branching model where merges between the branches are only allowed by the senior developers who perform code reviews.

Although a little drastic, you could even switch to using Git instead of TFVC. Git has support for pull requests where you lock down your master branch and then use the pull requests as a review mechanism.

Answer 2

There is currently no support for this within TFS. What you could do is:

1. ask the developer to seek a TFS Code Review before each checkin.
2. enforce comments on all change sets.
3. ask the senior developer to review the change set comments before you label the release / deploy etc

Or if the project is critical devote more time towards pairing.