Create a merge task

[mslagle]

It would be helpful to have a merge task. At my company, we have many branches that need merged from the parent branch daily. We achieve this with two calls to tf.exe (one to merge, one to checkin). You already have a checkin task, just need a merge task.

[jessehouwing]

• Could you elaborate on how that task would deal with merge conflicts?
• Would it only be able to merge between existing branch relations?
• Does the build workspace already contain both source and target branches?
• would it work on a gated/shelveset build?

I suspect that you'd be able to use 'tf merge' from the commandline before calling my tf checkin task.

Merge doesn't have to interact with the repository I suspect, so the commandline should work just fine.

On Jul 26, 2016 14:41, "mslagle" notifications@github.com wrote:

It would be helpful to have a merge task. At my company, we have many branches that need merged from the parent branch daily. We achieve this with two calls to tf.exe (one to merge, one to checkin). You already have a checkin task, just need a merge task.

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[mslagle]

• The tasks should on fail on merge conflicts that cannot be automatically resolved. Maybe in later revisions we can add options for default actions (take source, take destination).
• Yes - Otherwise a baseless merge would merge all items. However, I think maybe just using empty textboxes for input would be better. Let people decide what branches/folders to use.
• No, just the target branches. You don't need the source branch mapped to merge from it.
• I honestly have no idea how that would interact. (Lets not think about that).

I am currently using command line, so I don't think anything complex is needed.

[jessehouwing]

Given that I need to provide support for the tasks I write. Or at least try to do as best I can, we do need to think what happens in gated and shelveset builds. Or at least provide a default option to skip the task in those cases.

I don't have time until October for this, looking at my current priorities. If you want to provide a pull request, we'll be able to at least test some scenarios.

The update gated checkin is probably a good base task to start from, it has all the conditional logic already built in.

[sol-lee]

Any updates on the merge task? It would be nice to have it.