Best Practices for merging rulesets

Before merging a branch, it is a best practice to determine your answers to the following questions:

• Will you lock the branch rulesets before merging the branch?

  A best practice is to lock the branch rulesets after development is complete.

  To resolve conflicts, you must unlock the branch ruleset. You can unlock branch rulesets only if there are conflicts. After you resolve conflicts, try merging branch rulesets again.

• Do you want the merge process to create a new ruleset version in the base ruleset, so that after a successful merge of the rules from the branch ruleset, the new ruleset version contains the rules updated and created in the branch?

  A best practice is to always create a new ruleset version in the base ruleset to contain the rules from the corresponding branch ruleset, because doing so makes it easy to deliver enhancements in a precise, modular way.

• Will you lock the new ruleset version created in the base ruleset?

  A best practice is to lock the new ruleset version in the base ruleset, because in the multi-team environment that typically uses branches, locking the ruleset version alerts other teams that the features in that version are complete as of the point in time the version was created.

• Are any rules in the branch rulesets checked out?

  If the Merge Branches wizard encounters checked-out rules in the branch rulesets to be merged, it displays a warning and provides a report of the checked-out rules. All rules must be checked in before you can complete the merge. If you exit the wizard to complete steps to check in the rules, you must restart the Merge Branch RuleSets wizard.

• Do you want the branch and branch rulesets (with their rules) to be available after the merge? The default is to delete the branch and branch rulesets after a successful merge. You can package your branches before you start the Merge Branches wizard to keep a record for your branch and if you want to move branches across different development systems.

 

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