TFS branching with shared binaries

Question

I'm new to TFS, coming from an SVN background. I'm looking to set up TFS for the first time, so we're making design decisions.

We plan on having binaries shared between team projects, and the recommended solution for this seems to be to make a team project specifically for the binaries.

The recommended directory structure for the main codebase seems to be:

/DevProjects/TeamProjectName/Main/Source/ProductName/Source/ProjectName

So my binaries would be at

/DevProjects/Binaries/

In my .csproj files, I'd reference the binaries as

../../../../../../Binaries/{BinaryFile}

This is fine for the main codebase, but also in the recommended standards is to put the branches as:

/DevProjects/TeamProjectName/Development/BranchName/Source/ProductName/Source/ProjectName

This is one level different from the main codebase, so the .csproj files wouldn't reference the right places.

My options seem to be to use an absolute path in the .csproj files (which I wouldn't even know how to do in the IDE since it does relative paths by default), or to branch differently from what I'm reading.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

We make sure our branches are at the same depth as it would be in trunk. That way relative paths work in both places without modification.

Answer 2

Checked this place out. It talks about different branching concepts.

http://tfsguide.codeplex.com/