Moving Flare to New Branches in TFS

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kcummings
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu May 22, 2014 12:54 pm

Moving Flare to New Branches in TFS

Post by kcummings »

It was my recent experience that when I was trying to move my Flare project to a new branch in TFS 2012, my project was still pulling from the old branch. That being said, when I tried to unbind and rebind my project, Flare would just throw me errors, and I would not allow me to rebind to their new location. To fix this, I had to check the Flare project file out in TFS and edit the branch path in Notepad. After that, the project seemed to be pulling from the right branch and was working as expected.

I decided to post this as possible help to other, but I'd also be interested if anyone thinks this is an unnecessary work around/has suggestions for a more streamlined work flow.
phriend_o_phlair
Propeller Head
Posts: 60
Joined: Tue Jun 11, 2013 6:05 am

Re: Moving Flare to New Branches in TFS

Post by phriend_o_phlair »

I communicated with MadCap support on a related note and can confirm that branching is not supported currently (v10.0.0 as of this post). However, a feature request was generated over the course of my interaction with their team.

We have some serious branching going on here, too. The map of the branching looks like a cross-section of a V-12 engine; forward and reverse integration galore... it's wild. I have determined--with the help of a Sr. SW Architect--that our help will live in one stable branch and ONLY be pushed to other branches for big efforts. Everything help-related that devs are working on in other branches will live with me.

I was advised by MadCap that Flare users typically have separate, dedicated projects in TFS and that if there is a need to merge projects, they are normally merged in Flare before binding to source control.

What I want to know is this: Does anyone out there do a lot of merging of help projects within TFS? I would LOVE to know how this works out, as MadCap advised that they have not heard of anyone doing this.

Don't know if that relates to the original post, entirely, but hopefully it is useful. :lol:
KCinColorado
Propeller Head
Posts: 40
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:00 am

Re: Moving Flare to New Branches in TFS

Post by KCinColorado »

BOTH of these are useful - or will be down the road, so THANKS for posting! In the process of moving to TFS right now (from VSS if you can believe it!) and called MadCap Support for advice before starting. They specifically mentioned that branching was not supported or recommended with Flare 10 right now, but was a requested feature. (Thanks for paving the way, phriend_o_phlair!)

Engineering would prefer that my Help live under the associated project with the source code, rather than in a completely separate project. And while we don't typically need to do branching, it has happened occasionally. Hopefully MadCap will add that support before then.

kc
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