Team Foundation Server: cloning a collection project into a new collection

Question

We are going to create a new collection of Team Foundation Server for the next version of our application development. The source from our current version is largely inapplicable, with the exception of a few DLLs that should more or less remain unchanged. We wanted to create a new collection, but wondered if we could clone the DLL projects from our existing collection to save the story.

Is it possible? We understand that this can cause some “double maintenance” problems if there are any fixes for the DLLs, but we are not too concerned about this scenario.

So far I have come up with several resources. Some MSDN messages pointed out to people "Partitioning a collection of commands . " However, the problem is that you can only have one project in each collection. IT states:

A project cannot exist in more than one collection. Until you delete all duplicated projects between divided collections, you cannot run the renamed collection.

This is not what we want. We would like to support both projects with a history in each collection.

Otherwise, I saw the TFSConfig command. It contains the / clone option, but I'm not entirely sure about its use (additional examples are also hard to find), and it mentions that it is mainly used for separation.

Are we trying to do something that is impossible? Do we need to copy the source and add it as a new project to the new collection and reference the old collection if we really need a story? Thanks.

Answer 1

Like other commentators, you probably don't want to start a new Team Project collection for this purpose.

Common reasons against creating a new TPC are:

• Sharing code or work items between two Team Project collections is very difficult. It is almost as if you are connecting to a new server.
• If your project is so large that you may need to move the collection to your own SQL server in the future, there will not be much value in the new TPC

However, if you decide that you want to create a copy of an existing TPC on the same server, these are the following basic steps:

• Open the TFS admin console, go to the Team Project collection
• Select an existing collection and select "Delete Collection"
• Wait for disconnection to complete. This procedure copies the “general” data from the configuration database (for example, groups / identifiers) and stores it in the collection database.
• After disconnecting is complete, back up the database in SQL
• In the Admin console, select Attach Collection and select the database that you just detached and copied.

You can then perform these steps on the same server (or on another server if you want to move it there).

• Restore a database backup with a new database name
• In the TFS admin console, select Attach Collection and select the database that you just restored.
• TFS will consider the GUID of this database (stored as an extended property), it will see that it matches the currently running collection on the server and automatically gives it a new GUID.
• At this point you should run two collections.