TFS Unreasonable Merge

Question

I merge two branches that do not have parent child relationships. I started with a single file to check if the merge works before the actual merge. I use tfs with no merge basis to do this. The following is the command:

Tf merge / baseless C: \ Inetpub \ wwwroot \ Test \ CreateDescription.aspx.cs C: \ Inetpub \ wwwroot \ Test1 \ CreateDescription.aspx.cs / recursive

Changes have been made to both files. However, in the conflict resolution dialog box, I see only two options 1) Save the changes in the target branch 2) the copy code from the source branch

The merge of changes in the merge tool is grayed out. What to do to enable this option. I want to manually merge the changes in both branches.

Answer 1

An easy way to do this is to check the file you want to assign (ie C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\Test1\CreateDescription.aspx.cs) and then use the external merge tool to merge the changes. I'm a big fan of SourceGear Diffmerge , mainly because it's free (like in beer). This will allow you to merge files and resolve conflicts.

Once you do this, you can run an unreasonable merge to establish a merge relationship between branches and tell the merge tool in TFS to save the changes to the target. You can also tell TFS to use DiffMerge as a consolidation tool that can get rid of the problem all together.