TFS Branching and Merging draft Guideline

Branch and Merge is a core concept in TFS to facilate Source Control and release
 management. There are various approach to these topics. But here are brain-dump
 while encountering practical issues using TFS ( Team Fundation server).

(1) Agile Development Directory Structure representing Team, products, solutions,
 major branch

      Trading System
            CRD
            XIP
              GMO.XIP
                 Branches
                   2008
                   2009
                 Trunk


(2) Each branch represent a weekly release version. and Trunk should not be released.
    This will allows us to support different usage of XIP solution for different 
    business cases and still support common core.
    If CMMI are used, then the structure could be based on version number not related to Dates

(3) For non-release related feature (eg. new helper function or bug fixes), a 
feature branches should be used for the changes. In other words, Trunk can only be
changed through merge back from branches.

(4) Branching should be off Tip Revision (Latest Version), rather than a label since TFS needs 
to duplicated files on branching and we have to use duplicated directory structure, which in
 itself already acts like Label.