Working on Branch of Project Affecting other Branch

[Justin Spindler]

Good morning,

I have a solution in a repository that I have been versioning using labels. When I need to make changes to previous releases of the solution I branch the solution from the label into a separate area of the repository, open the solution via Visual Studio from the branched location and make the changes there. Good or bad, this has always worked in the past.

Recently the occasion has arisen where I must patch an older version of this code. The branch had already been made at a previous date due to other changes so I did not have to go through that step. However, when I try to open the project from Visual Studio it appears to be confusing the branched solution from the main solution. The working folder, which I have set at the root to inherit so that the directory structure mirrors that of the repository, is automatically flipped in the main solution to that of the branched solution, and Visual Studio downloads the latest version of the files from the main solution. If I manually change the working folder back to inherited under the main solution and perform a Get Latest operation on the branched solution Vault shows that the files under the main solution are Renegade and contain the source from the older branched version. If I check out a file in the branched solution from Visual Studio it is showing as checked out under the main solution instead.

The version of Vault I am using, both server and client, is 4.1.4.18402. The version of Visual Studio is 2003 using the classic Vault SCC provider.

The current development project in Vault is $/GSSI/Core/Latitude/Dev/LetterConsole/, working folder C:\GSSI\Core\Latitude\Dev\LetterConsole
The older version branched from a label in Vault is $/GSSI/Core/Latitude/7.0.2/LetterConsole/, working folder C:\GSSI\Core\Latitude\7.0.2\LetterConsole

When I open the older version from Visual Studio, the working folder of the current version is automatically changed to that of the older version.
If I Get Latest from within the Vault Client on the older version the different files in the current version show as renegade.
If I check out a file from the older version from within Visual Studio, Vault Client shows the file being checked out in the current version

Has this behavior been experienced before? This is extremely problematic and breaks the method that I have been using to fix older versions of our software. Assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Justin

[lbauer]

After you do a get of the branch, have you tried unbinding and rebinding the branched project, using File->Source Control->Change Source control to bind it to the proper location?

Also, see if this KB article is relevant:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;317925

[Justin Spindler]

That article didn't seem to help. Visual Studio indicated that the connection status was invalid after attempting to change the binding location of the solution to the appropriate branch in Vault. Also, the solution that Visual Studio had indicated was checked out was the current branch and I didn't want to risk overwriting that version with something incorrect.

However, the article did give me an idea. I checked out the older branched solution file and opened it in Notepad and the bindings were all pointed to the newer branch. I manually modified the bindings for each project and saved the solution file then had Visual Studio 2003 open the project from Vault and now it seems that the bindings are all correct. I can understand the issue as the branch operation within Vault doesn't handle the binding information in the solution files but this is scary in that if you're not diligent you could accidentally make changes to the wrong Vault project. I also don't understand how I've never seen this behavior before as this is certainly not the first time I've had to make changes to our older branched versions.

[lbauer]

At this point it's hard to say how things got into the state they did, especially if you were doing something the same way you always had but this time got different results.

If you run into this again, let us know; we may be able to troubleshoot further.