Rollback on branched changes

Hi kids,

Today, we're going to learn how to perform a rollback in a TFS branch where you ONLY want to affect the current branch (i.e. you don't want your rollback to affect branches with whom you branch changes).

Scenario
We have "contaminated" a (Release) branch with changes that belongs to the next release down the road. An issue arrise in production, which needs immediate hotfixing. The responsisble team makes their change in their dedicated Hotfix branch, but when they are to merge their changes to the Release branch, they realize that the release branch does not look like they left it. (In this scenario, deployment scripts scripts are configured to deploy from the Release branch and nothing else).

Technical Solution
(You'll need Microsoft Team Foundation Server Power Tools (TFPT))

  • Sequential rollback of changes in Release
    • Get history of changes in branch
    • CAREFULLY write down the change-set numbers
    • Undo (and shelf) any local changes to your workspace
    • Get latest from branch you want to roll back
    • Start Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt
    • Go to the folder of your branch (eg. C:\Source\Release)
    • For Each Number Set in Change List, sorted highest to lowest:
      • Run tfpt rollback /changset:Number
      • Check in (with comment: "Rollback (Check-In/Total number of items in your change list) Changeset: Number)
        Example: Rollback (1/12) Changeset: 34156
  • Verification of changes:
    • Get latest version (recursive, overwrite) of branch
    • Copy the physical folder to a temp folder (Ex: %TEMP%\COMPARE\LATEST)
    • Get specific version (recursive, overwrite) of branch from the changeset you wish to be in
      Example: If I were to rollback change sets 5-10, I want the branch to return to the state of change set 4.
    • Using, for example, WinMerge, compare the two folders. They should be identical.
  • Updating the dependent branches

    Since the branch we have rolled back is merged to other branches, next merge will potentially contain a LOT of changes. Our goal is not to affect the other branches, however - we only wanted to "clean up" the source branch.

    • Get latest version (recursive, overwrite) (again) of source branch (the one you have rolled back).
    • Get latest version (recursive, overwrite) of target branch.
    • Get history of your source branch, CAREFULLY write down the change set numbers of the changes you have made during your rollback
    • For Each Number in Change List, sorted lowest to highest:
      • tf merge /discard /recursive source_branch target_branch /version:CNumber
        Example: tf merge /discard /recursive $/Release/DevXp $/Base/DevXp /version:C31342
    • Check in your changes in your target branch, giving a descriptive description (e.g. Merge from Release\DevXp after rollback)

Note: merge /discard performs a merge from the source to the target, throws away the result, but marks the source as merged to the target.

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