TFS Simple Reverse Integration Marks All Files As Changed

Question

I have a simple structure in TFS. Something like this:

          [Main]
            |
     ---------------
    |       |       |
  [Br1]   [Br2]   [Br3]

The code is merged from Main to Br3 has been worked with in Br3 for a while. Then one merge happened from Br3 to Main with a few conflicts (about 15 files) and once trying to check in on Main branch I get a huge number of files marked as changed to be checked in. I assume those are all the files in the Main branch. When randomly comparing some of the marked ones, there is no visible change between to two (even if displaying white spaces).

Anyone knows what happened here?

EDIT

How do I find out if the change would only be in the file access rights between my local and server file, and how could I ignore those kind of changes?

No. Only merged with other devs. I suspect that the access right of root folder has been changed and propagated down recursively. — DDan, Feb 11 '16 at 11:17
When you say merged with other devs, do you mean directly from Br2 -> Br3, rather than Br2 -> Main -> Br3? — James Reed, Feb 11 '16 at 12:53
That's the cause then. A baseless merge will need to establish a merging relationship will all of the files in the target branch. In that case every single file in Br3 has been merged from Br2, even if the files contents haven't changed. Now that you're merging back to Main from Br3 TFS has tracked the previous merge and needs to update the merge history. — James Reed, Feb 11 '16 at 12:59

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:28

According to your comment. Since you are doing a baseless merge. Then its a normal phenomenon. When you did the baseless merge, every single file in the solution was marked as changed and listed in the pending changes during check in. There is no option which you can simply ignore those kind of changes.

Did you mean you want to find out 'the real changed files'?

You can try below workaround undo your pending changes. When you get the confirmation dialog choose "No to all". Only your pending changes should be left. from this question Files listed as pending changes when doing merges that didn't change?

Note: This works when you only have changes to files. It will not merge any New files that you have added.

TFS Simple Reverse Integration Marks All Files As Changed

1 Answers1